" What are the advantages and disadvantages of the internet?"

These days the internet has become more and more popular all over the world and is now an integral part of modern society. The internet refers to a global network of computers connected by servers, which allows for the free and easy sharing of information. This essay will assess whether the internet can be seen as beneficial or harmful. The essay will analyse the arguments and form a conclusion about them.
To begin with the positive points : First, the internet is good for communication. In this way, people all over the world can communicate quickly and conveniently with each other by chatting or sending emails. Second, it has lots of benefits for education. In this way, students are able to conduct research online to help them with their studies. Next, businesses get lots of advantages by using the web. For instance, it is now possible for companies to advertise and sell their products by setting up web-sites, or alternatively they could promote themselves effectively by utilising some of the e-commerce tools available in cyberspace. Last, there are plenty of entertainment sites on the net.

Moving onto the negative aspects : Firstly, the internet has no rules or laws. This means that criminals and terrorist organisations can openly operate behind the safety of a computer screen. The terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda have been extremely effective in using the power of the web to promote terror on a worldwide scale. Next, sex sites are a fundamental problem online. In this regard, if children were to view such obscene material, their minds would be adversely affected. Lastly, viruses are easily transmitted via the internet. A good example of this was the Love Bug virus a few years ago, which caused havoc and mayhem by infecting a large number of computers over a very wide area.

In conclusion, it can be observed from the above arguments that the internet has both pros and cons. It is disadvantageous in that it has no laws, sex sites and viruses; however it is more beneficial than harmful primarily because it provides a very convenient, effective and quick method of communicating in the modern world.

By : A. Mohammadi