8. Issues with the Internet

Information overload

There is almost too much information on the Internet. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there.

When you type a search term into a search engine, you won't just get a few results, you will get millions!

Search engines do a good job at prioritising which are the most relevant sites for your search term. However that one piece of information that you are after might be on page 345 of results. There is very little chance that you are going to find it.

Information can be biased

No one owns the Internet and there is nothing to stop people posting their opinions and points of view on web pages, forums, blogs.

Many people believe what they read on the Internet. You need to be careful and think about what you are reading. An awful lot of material and web sites are biased and only give you one point of view.

Information can be inaccurate

With a book or encyclopedia, you can be pretty confident that what you are reading has been checked, cross referenced and is correct. But with the Internet, no one checks what has been written. The website that looks like it has all of the answers to your history homework might just be incorrect. You need to double check things out for yourself - don't just believe what you read.

Offensive material

No matter how careful you are when using the Internet, there is always the possibility that you will come across some sites that contain offensive or even illegal material.

The police spend a lot of time trying to track down and shut sites which have unsuitable images of children on them. But as soon as they close one, another one pops up.

There are also some pretty scary sites which promote things like anorexia. People post images of how thin they are and they get encouragement from others on the site to continue losing weight.

Cyberbullying

With the growth of the Internet and new technology, bullying has been moving from the traditional playground to emails, chatrooms, texts and social websites.

This type of bullying is every bit as harmful and hurtful as if done in person but it is much harder to tackle and stop.

Addiction

There has been a worrying increase in the number of people who are becoming 'addicted' to the internet. Every spare moment they have is spent online, some even go without proper sleep so that they don't have to log off. There have been reports of families breaking up and people losing their jobs because of this problem.