Web of Lies
The Internet plays a profound role in our daily lives - we use it for almost everything. One of its major perks is being able to gather information and communicate with a vast number of people across the globe. This is amazing for globalisation and we keep improving the way we go about things.
We’ve adapted to living in the online world and almost everything we do is linked to the internet. Kids no longer enjoy playing outside and would rather watch shows or play computer games online. Students and adults relish socialising so social media becomes ideal. The internet is not the problem, it has helped us a lot… but the problem is that we often abuse its usefulness. Though we can interact with people, not everyone is who they say they are. We can meet some unpleasant characters without even realising it, which decreases our safety as we put our personal details out.
Despite the ‘dramatics’ of being in danger via online interaction, we become so consumed with being on the net daily that we lose track of the important things in life. We simply forget to live: some people no longer have real friends and instead they’d rather measure their popularity by how many Facebook friends they have. This is rather annoying, as we increasingly lose sight of the bigger picture and live to impress people we don’t really know.
We have become so obsessed with social media and the internet in general that we seemingly believe everything we see. There are many pros and cons with living online. Obesity is one of the cons and is caused by constantly gaining weight and not doing anything about it. While surfing the net, we usually sit down for hours and snack on whatever we can find. Living like that will affect us physically and not in the best way. Junk food is easily accessible and seems convenient.
Cultivation Theory, whereby embedded values are communication subtly via the media, is enhanced and we buy into the misperceptions created by online shows, games and virtual ‘realities’. Celebrity culture also influences us as we tend to strive to be like the people we idolise… thus increasing these obsessions.
The internet has been the greatest invention of our time but we can never appreciate a good thing as we always overdo it… leaving a bitter taste in our mouths.
By Buhle Lindwa
