Negative Effect of Internet Essay

You are at home in the U.S.A. and want to contact a friend in Ecuador, so you use the internet to communicate and life is better now. While, internet shortens the distances there are also three other negative effects impersonal communication, community misinformation and identity theft. First of all, most of us know how to use a computer but, do you remember the last time you wrote a letter to your mother in Chicago instead of sending an e-mail? Each day people prefer more the use or impersonal communication media such as chat rooms, e-mail than calling or writing to their families. At this moment the contact between families is at risk. The second negative effect or internet appears to be related with the impersonate characteristic we talked previously. Because, internet is impersonal most of the time, is the perfect media for spreading rumors and misinforming the entire community. A very common form of misinformation is the use of chain letters. For example, someone sends you an e-mail saying that McDonald’s burgers are genetically engineered (and you believe it even without evidence) so you send the same e-mail to all your contacts. Within a few hours your contacts do same as you and hundreds of people believe in the e-mail without any attempt to confirm the content. The third and last negative effect of internet is the identity theft. If the chain letters we were talking about don’t scares you yet, pay attention to your personal information. Each day two out of five citizens suffer some king of identity theft. Because a lot of transactions are made through the internet it is easy to steal your social security number and your credit card number. Furthermore, sometimes you give the information to the thieves without knowing it when you apply for that risk free credit card online, or pay for products on-line. In summary, the internet can make communication fast but impersonal, can also misinform and somebody else can steal your identity, without your knowing. As a result, I encourage people to visit the family, don’t believe everything you see on the internet and be aware of where you use your personal data including credit cards.