3 ways that internet is changing our society

            In my opinion, the internet has majorly impacted our society and culture. The internet has changed the way our society is culturally in multiple ways. According to Drew Hendricks, one way it has changed is that we treat intimacy differently. It has treated intimacy differently by affecting the way we maintain relationships with our family and friends. Now due to help of the internet we can keep in touch with each other and keep everyone updated on our lives more easily than in the past, the concept of near relationships has changed. For example, social media allows people to constantly update their profiles about their lives. Some people will update their profile by adding, removing, or changing the use of their photos, videos, comments, as well as allowing us to stay in touch from moment to moment. People who we care about and as well as some that we don’t can even view our life online. Associates from years ago can now know our political leanings, where we go to and graduate from school, who we’re marrying, who our kids are, and even where we live. Even something like this can create a new sense of intimacy that didn’t exist in the past, since people feel that they know all there is to know about the people in their lives. This, in turn, has actually decreased the significance of personal life events for example, high school reunions. If we all know what everyone else is up to anyway, then why spend the money and travel time to catch up in person? In my opinion, I think this one event is both a positive and negative change in our society. It is a positive change by now it is easier to stay in connect that people you once met. It is a negative change because for some people who don’t know how to change their settings online, their privacy is not very private anymore.

Our privacy is another potential hazard of communicating via technology is a lack of privacy. The message that we send over the Internet may be insecure, allowing third parties to read email conversations or intercept instant messages. If an outsider manages to compromise an email account or application, he or she may gain access to months or even years of correspondence. Hacking someone’s account is not that difficult, every day we see more and more people’s account being hacked, some celebrities even. Encryption can help keep communications safe from prying eyes, but protecting every link in the social communication chain can be difficult. Malware authors are even beginning to target phones and mobile devices, recognizing them as always-available windows into their owners' personal lives. This change in our society has affected us in a negative way, without privacy, our lives are out in the open and all our accounts, social media and financial accounts both easy for the taken (www.techwalla.com).

Lastly, the last concept of how the internet is changing culturally is that the rise of mobile communication, especially through smartphones, means that most people have constant access to the internet. We are no longer tied to desktop computers; we can get online almost anytime, anywhere, which has created noticeable impacts on how we celebrate personal life events. For instance, being constantly connected to the internet has created a need for near-constant documentation of our daily lives. Since social media has become such an integral part of how we communicate, many people feel a need to post about everything from their breakfast to the birth of their friend’s child online, all the time (smallbiztrends.com). People who live-tweet arguments they overhear at restaurants, Snapchat clips from concerts in real time, and even pose for social media shots at funerals. In response to this, people are starting to have to actively discourage social media documentation during celebrations of life events like weddings. It’s growing increasingly popular for engaged couples to ban cell phone photos and videos during their wedding ceremonies due to issue like guests stepping out into the aisle for a photo or getting in the professional photographer’s way to snap that perfect shot. While it’s difficult to say that the internet is the sole cause of these developments, there’s no denying that it has made a significant impact on how we celebrate personal life events. As we navigate the social evolution that comes with changes in technology, it will be interesting to pay attention to how these events continue to change with it. In my opinion, this change is a negative change. We know have to be careful for what we do because cameras a literally everywhere and people aren’t afraid to tape something.

 Works Cited:

https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/07/impact-the-internet-has-on-society.html

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/negative-effects-of-technology-on-communication