Current Uses of the Internet
Throughout the years many people have become attached to the Internet while they rely on it everyday whether it would be for communicating, research, education, paying bills online, shopping, listening to music, or watching a Youtube video. There are many things the Internet has to offer and as it continues to grow, and so do its applications.
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One of the most popular uses of the Internet is online communicating. There are a few different ways to communicate online and they include email, chat, message, blog, and video calling. Not only are there different ways of communicating online, there are different sites that offer these communications such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail offer many different applications including email, shopping, building and creating your own website, catch up on the latest news, chat, and much more. Facebook is a very popular site in which you can share photos, videos, update your status and live chat with your friends and family at any time. Twitter is somewhat similar to Facebook but it is more continual meaning status updates are much more frequent. Skype allows you to video call and live chat with others you have become friends with. These places give users many options and opportunities and as their services advance the number of people that use them will forever expand.
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Another very common use of the Internet is for research. Many people use the Internet to research all of the time whether it is for personal use, education, or for work. The amount of information found on the Internet is endless, but one disadvantage of the info found within the net it that is all may not be true, so we have to be sure to decipher it correctly. The web is a great place to find what you are looking for, it has an answer for everything; if you want to look up what year our first president was born, how to change the oil in a car, or a good recipe, it will give you a solution. Not only can you find information on the Internet, you can also add it yourself, such as with Wikipedia or even your own site for instance.
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Education has expanded from the "brick building" to an online setting in the past few years. Some kids do not feel comfortable leaving their home for school and would rather learn at their own pace. Online education has become popular for colleges, universities, and even for grades k-12. A popular online highschool that just recently became a k-12 is Insight School which is a public school but is based online and taught by teachers across the country. These schools have gave children more opportunities. There are also many colleges that offer complete degree programs online such as a Distance Learning program. These have opened the eyes of many people and since they have been created the amount of people enrolled in them have increase significantly.
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Many people have resorted from writing a check and mailing their bills by mail to paying a majority of them all online. This gives people the opportunity to pay their bill from the convenience and comfort of their own home. A vast amount of people find this to be a great thing, especially those that do not have transportation or those that would like to save a few dollars on stamps.
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With the Internet ever increasing with applications, people have started to want to be able to do everything they can do in the real world, on the Internet. Instead of commuting to go to a store and dealing with the public, people have started to shop online in drastic numbers. According to many people, shopping online is much easier than going to a store and waiting in line, and they also find good sales when shopping on the net. You can buy just about anything online without ever walking out the door. This convenience has brought in great amounts of sales for many companies.
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The traditional radio has transformed into the computer over the past decade as the number of users of iTunes has increased. iTunes is avaiable to anyone who sets up an account and offers thousands of songs to those who purchase them. Having the abiality to have all of your music in one spot and being able to listen to whatever you wish at the moment has increased the use of iTunes dramatically. People have changed from turning on the radio to turning on the computer, connecting to the Internet, and starting up iTunes. Youtube also offers music along with millions of videos. Youtube has brought a lot of attention to people as it connects ordinary people to it, meaning anyone can put just about anything on Youtube for an audience to view. It has limitless restrictions.
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There are many other activities the Internet has to offer, those listed above are just a few of the most popular that take place on a daily basis in vast numbers. We talk about all of these new advances as if they are great, and they may be, but are they really going to help us in the long run? Are they going to help grow or weaken our economy? Taking a variety of things and putting it into one thing such as taking shopping, bill pay, and the radio all online, is that going to drop profits for radio stations, local stores, and cause cut in mail worker jobs? These are questions that need to be examined while everything continues to transfer to the world wide web.
