The Impact of the Internet on University Students: A Detailed Analysis

This essay comprehensively examines the multifaceted impact of the internet on university students in the 21st century. It begins by highlighting the significant influence of technology, particularly the World Wide Web, on modern education, emphasizing the rise of online learning platforms and their benefits. The essay details the advantages of internet usage, such as expanded opportunities for learning, easier research capabilities, increased flexibility in course delivery, and greater accessibility to educational resources. Conversely, it explores the negative aspects, including potential addiction to online games, the decline of face-to-face interactions, and the rise of criminal elements. Furthermore, the report addresses crucial aspects of personal security and privacy when using the internet, discussing challenges like data security and the prevention of offensive behavior. It also provides practical measures to enhance security, such as staying updated with software, updating privacy settings, blocking cookies, unlinking accounts, and utilizing secure connections, firewalls, and antivirus services. The conclusion summarizes the benefits of the internet for students while emphasizing the importance of robust security measures to overcome its challenges.

Individual Essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
In this today's recent world each and every aspect of an individual is influenced by
technology (Costley, 2014). Major impact of technology on education was since on the arrival of
World Wide Web. Technology effectively created different types of new advanced methods of
learning which help university students to gain knowledge from different platforms through
various online programs. As per the study it has been evaluated that, total number of university
students who use internet for their learning has been doubles within six years. Internet not only
provide university students an unseamed position in this modern working environment but it also
benefits them to create and develop their learning into smart and innovative approach. In this
present report, formative discussions have been made on the topic of impact of internet on
university students in 21st century. In addition, this report covers comparison and contrast in
between negative and positive aspects on internet along with its challenges and numerous
measures of privacy and security.
There are different types of positive aspects of internet mentioned below in descriptive
manner Expanded opportunities Technology remarkably benefits students to expand their area of
opportunities and learn from various different sources. With the help of internet, students can
learn from different sources without travel and can follow a team with the help of which they can
take advices from subject experts via emails, video conferencing and blogs (Edwards and Roy,
2017). In addition with this, university students can also share their learned information with
other students of different location. They can also complete their project by working in a
collaborative manner with the help of different internet tools like Google docs and wikis. Easier
to do research With the help of different types of internet sources students can gather required
related information. Internet save time and cost of university students as they can save their time
which they may spend on accessing materials and information from libraries. Nowadays,
students with the help of internet can subscribe online journals in order to effectively develop
their conceptual framework of knowledge. In addition, with the help of internet university
students can easily able to complete their allotted assignment in an easier and faster way.
Increased Flexibility Internet provide numerous advantages to universities and colleges to
effectively offer their courses through online medium which provide benefits to their students to
acquire knowledge and learn at wishful place. It removes the barrier for students to stick on a
strict timelines. With the help of internet students can now able to get education form anywhere
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they are regardless of time. Internet also ensured that students from nowadays are not required to
travel form large distances to a physical class to learn. In addition, internet also allows students
to learn as per their time and intellectual ability. Along with this, university students can also
able to schedule their learning in a proper framework of time as per according to timetables as all
of the study materials and resources are offered online. Increasing accessibility Internet made
education more easier and accessible then it was earlier used to be. As with the help of various
online courses university students can easily able to access education from various online
measure as per their comfort. In addition with this internet effectively benefits students to
diversify their area of learning. Large number of universities by taking advantage of internet
have moved one step ahead and offer their courses on online platform. This will allow students
to access their desired education course via mobile devices and computers. It will further help in
removing different types of geographical barriers that lead towards hindering learning path of
university students.
Negative aspects of internet are University students get addicted to online games
University students use to play online games in their spare time which can further lead towards
addictiveness. This will create numerous obstacles and can steal away their precious time which
they may use in some other productive work (Dir and Cyders, 2015). Internet recently has been
accused of causing obesity among students as most of the students in university prefer to spend
their time in front of mobile and computers while playing games rather to play outside. Loss of
human touch Students completely indulge themselves into the zone of internet which impacts on
their segment of human touch. They forget to spend their time with real persons present within
their surroundings and lacks to give their attention even their family. This decreases their change
to become socialise. University students those who mostly involve in internet based activity
forgets to spend their time and make interaction with classmates, family and friends. It has been
mostly observed in many universities that students walk around by staring at their mobile phones
without even focusing and noticing around. Rise in criminal elements Internet increases the
overall rate of criminal elements. These elements enter through emails and can easily extract
personal information of students. There are many websites that fool young individuals and
attracts their believes towards criminal owned activities and extract millions of money from by
misleading them.
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Responsibility for personal security and privacy when using the internet, Internet is a network
that provides a developmental platform with the help of which sharing of information can be
easily be done (Balakrishnan and Dahnil, 2014). Internet presents with numerous benefits and
these advantages of advancement in internet technology has to bear own cost in the form of
privacy. The internet technology has made the average internet user vulnerable to threats and
risks like data breach, theft, crime committed in cybercrime. Mentioned there are some
challenges of security and privacy, Data security One of the biggest challenge that has been
faced by individuals is related to safeguarding data and informations of users as these data
mainly contain large amount of personal informations as data breaches severely affect security
breach of an individual. Prevention of offensive or illegal behaviour Offensive and illegal
behaviour is a serious threat that put humiliating effect on a person. Offensive behaviour on
internet mainly take place on different types of online spaces such as emails, chat rooms and
social networking sites. Some the major illegal behaviour include, flaming, technology-
facilitated abuse, violence, harassment and image based abuse.
There are some measures with the help of which personal security and privacy can be
taken into effective consideration, Stay Updated It is essential to keep computer system, security
software and browser up to date on a regular manner. For this, one can turn on their automatics
updates whenever it is possible, Privacy setting It is important for an individual to update their
privacy setting on different types of websites including social media such as, Google and
Facebook. This can be done by an individual under setting menu option (Rashid and Asghar,
2016). As these are those sites through which information can be shared publicly. With the help
of changing setting one can able to ensure security of their personal information, Blocking
cookies It is another one of the best effective measure with the help of which an individual can
easily able to block third party cookies on their browser. By doing this, it will make hard for
websites to track the last a person visited. Along with this, it will also make unable for websites
to know a person username. There are two browser plug-ins with the help of which blocking of
cookies can be done, that include, AdBlock Plus and uBlock. Unlinking Accounts There are
numerous types of websites that offer option of linking accounts. For an instance, Google allow a
person to link all of the different accounts to an individual to link with Gmail accounts in a
browser. This Google login access giving by websites creates more risk. Thus, it is important for
a person to unlink their accounts in order to protect most of their information. Secure
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connections, Firewalls and Antivirus Services In order to protect information and data in best
effective way it is important for an individual to use secure wireless connections (Garrison,
2016). In addition with this, it is also important for a person to stop using Wi-Fi of public
networks. Further advice has been given to an individual to create a strong password for those
users who don't have passwords as it acts as an barrier to share information.
CONCLUSION
As per the above mentioned report it has been concluded that, it internet provide different
types of advantages to individuals mainly to university students as to gain knowledge and
informations from wide area of platforms. For this, it is important for students and individual to
use best effective and strong security measures with the help of this they can easily able to
overcome most of the internet challenges.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Garrison, D. R., 2016. E-learning in the 21st century: A community of inquiry framework for
research and practice. Routledge.
Balakrishnan, B. K., Dahnil, M. I. and Yi, W. J., 2014. The impact of social media marketing
medium toward purchase intention and brand loyalty among generation Y. Procedia-
Social and Behavioral Sciences. 148, pp.177-185.
Dir, A. L. and Cyders, M. A., 2015. Risks, risk factors, and outcomes associated with phone and
internet sexting among university students in the United States. Archives of sexual
behavior. 44(6). pp.1675-1684.
Haight, M., Quan-Haase, A. and Corbett, B. A., 2014. Revisiting the digital divide in Canada:
The impact of demographic factors on access to the internet, level of online activity, and
social networking site usage. Information, Communication & Society. 17(4), pp.503-
519.
Kirschner, P. A. and De Bruyckere, P., 2017. The myths of the digital native and the multitasker.
Teaching and Teacher Education. 67. pp.135-142.
Rashid, T. and Asghar, H. M., 2016. Technology use, self-directed learning, student engagement
and academic performance: Examining the interrelations. Computers in Human
Behavior. 63. pp.604-612.
Brahimi, T. and Sarirete, A., 2015. Learning outside the classroom through MOOCs. Computers
in Human Behavior. 51. pp.604-609.
Ally, M. and Prieto-Blázquez, J., 2014. What is the future of mobile learning in education?.
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. 11(1). pp.142-
151.
Costley, K. C., 2014. The Positive Effects of Technology on Teaching and Student Learning.
Online Submission.
Edwards, M. A. and Roy, S., 2017. Academic research in the 21st century: Maintaining scientific
integrity in a climate of perverse incentives and hypercompetition. Environmental
Engineering Science. 34(1). pp.51-61.
Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L.K. and Caspari, A.K., 2015. Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st
century: Learning in the 21st century. ABC-CLIO.
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