How has the increased dependence on the Internet led to it becoming a source of problems for

many people?

Nowadays, the Internet has become a place where people have gotten enough comfort to
use every day. There are 4.8 billion internet users worldwide today, equating to almost 61% of the
world's total population. Humans had reached a high dependence on it, bringing this excessive use
of the Internet to the cost of one's physical, psychological, social, or vocational well-being.
However, this led people to earn significant consequences, being this usually been ignored by
people. This type of reaction only had demonstrated that the Internet has been adding
considerable weight to people who become very dependent on the Internet—telling us the big
community that we are, that people are starting not to know how to deal with the Internet. As
well, lack of security is one of those things that affect people to a large extent, cyberattacks are
terrible because people who depend on the internet and get scammed or something else are
losing all their personal information.

First off, there are many reasons why internet dependence affects humans' daily lives,
such as mental health. According to Villanova University, when this happens, people start being
around pornography, chat rooms, gaming, information, shopping, blogging, gambling, or any of
the infinity number of other available online activities but in a more excessive way. These activities
where people feel comforted and relaxed had created new types of social interactions to alienate
them from society by weakening their interactions with people on personal and physical
occasions. It has been demonstrated that people who do not socialize have Poor self-esteem,
Depression, Loss of Reality, and lots of more severe reactions that make a person's life more and
more insignificant for him. Those with a lot of unstructured time on their hands are more prone to
Internet addiction than those with a lot of controlled and limited spare time. With this cause
alone, many college students are at risk of becoming addicted to the Internet. In addition,
according to "EL TIEMPO," a Colombian newspaper, identified that young individuals could show
indicators of device addiction and live immersed in higher pressure for digital contact due to
factors such as violent events or a lack of access to mental health treatments. They risk being
subjected to cyberbullying, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week—making us see
how young people are exposed to social media thanks to this dependence. Usually, loneliness and
inattention lead people to this global distraction. In a certain way, they can escape from reality and
find few bulls of happiness that are more satisfying than their reality. They do not recognize that
they are addicted to it because that addiction is only a distraction for people to get out of their
existence. This constant use of the Internet creates mental problems for people without
understanding that they are doing great harm.
On the other hand, people in this day and age have many questions about the good and bad sides
of the Internet; not all is bad. With the advent of the Internet, a large amount of knowledge was
acquired with just one click, and the communication that we have today is a part of our daily lives
as human beings that we are. Internet as well had brought positive actions for us to replace things
such as communication. According to the University of Minnesota Extension, more than half of the
girls surveyed in a recent Girl Scout research study said online social networking helped them feel
closer to their friends. About half of those polled said social media had helped them become more
involved in topics they cared about. Meaning that this reliance is not improper because it has
assisted individuals, particularly teens, in feeling accompanied and, in some ways, not alone to
prevent loneliness and the different mental issues that abound today in this community of young
people.
Additionally, according to a Michigan State University study, students with poor self-esteem who
were active social network site users felt more engaged with their campus community than those
who used social network sites less frequently. Their social network sites use enhanced their
existing offline ties. But we also needed to realize that the management of this Internet could not
replace one-to-one talking or stuff out of the virtuality.
The management that we apply to the electronic devices that connect us to the Internet should be
moderated; we could not always depend on the Internet because later on, we would start feeling
the consequences such as the lack of knowledge or the damage to our mental health. Go out and
get fresh air is not bad, talk to persons is better, and you would have a chance to change this. We
can see that both sources provide us consequences of this dependence and tell us that it is not
bad at all, one is talking about the health damage and the other one about the good use of this
media, but the usage we are giving to it is not suitable.

Secondly, personal information and cyber threats are just two examples of how internet
dependence affects daily life. The INTERPOL stated that because many firms and individuals do not
ensure that their cyber defenses are up to date, the rising reliance on the Internet gives up new
opportunities. The report's conclusions underline the importance of increased coordination
between the public and private sectors to successfully address the threat that COVID 19 poses to
our cyber-health. In just four months, one of INTERPOL's business sector partners discovered
907,000 spam emails, 737 malware events, and 48,000 harmful URLs tied to COVID-19. Thanks to
this, many Internet users have been affected.
People are unaware of the unique web pages that this platform may provide; however, we must
constantly be vigilant and remember that the Internet has dark corners. Its incorrect use is
supporting cyberattacks in winning more battles but not the war.
Internet scams and phishing, Disruptive Malware (ransomware and DDoS), Malware intended to
obtain data, and Evil domains are just some of the hundreds of ways hackers could take out your
personal information for their benefit. The miss information of the citizens in the digital world has
been a severe problem these days. At least 40% of all the people in the world do not know that
words and phrases that scarcely existed a decade ago are now part of our daily language, thanks
to the use of new technology to launch cyber assaults against governments, corporations, and
individuals. According to the INTERPOL, these crimes, which have no physical or virtual borders,
wreak substantial damage and pose a serious threat to victims worldwide. Cybercrime is increasing
at a breakneck pace, with new trends emerging all the time. Cybercriminals are becoming more
agile, leveraging new technology at breakneck speed, adapting their attacks to new approaches,
and coordinating in hitherto unseen ways. Criminal networks operate on a worldwide scale,
orchestrating complicated operations against their targets in seconds. Spain is the third-most
vulnerable to cyberattacks, with a 125 percent increase in the previous year. The COVID-19 crisis
has accelerated the pace of digital transformation that organizations were already undergoing
before the pandemic's onset. From this point, it could be said that dependence on the Internet has
generated many consequences of high degree and prejudice for people. Still, at the same time, we
are shown that people without this dependence are usually harmed more considerably by the
simple fact that they do not have the same ability to stay informed enough to be aware of the
situation. Reliance on the Internet generates long-range knowledge, but those who do not use it
are losing a great deal of information they may never know about without the Internet.

Through the proof analysis of each argument to identify the strengths and weaknesses of
each one, the first sources are involved in how the dependence on the internet had affected the
mental health of our young society and providing us that young people had been affected to a
large extent by this dependence. The information is presented to us in a very good and believable
manner, as it comes from university research and a well-known Colombian newspaper, both of
which have a great level of trust and reliability, while also providing us with extremely precise
information that raises awareness in those who read it. However, some of the sources offered
have flaws in that they do not clarify the types of answers that they present to us, despite the fact
that, in my opinion, the sources have a wealth of content and solutions.
On the other hand, we have the sources for the second problem, which I consider to be quite
reputable because they are Interpol-related and contain a wide range of data that benefit the
reader greatly; however, these sources do have a significant flaw, which is the solutions that they
give. They are few and not as detailed as those in the first problem, but the major distinction
between the sources is that they are even more reputable than university research because they
are affiliated with Interpol. Interpol constitutes a global organization that integrates 188 countries
around the world to counteract transnational crime, providing a strategic advantage to the
different police and justice administration entities in multilateral action against crime. As a result,
you may argue that your information is far more valuable.

To culminate, therefore, should we depend on the Internet? Yes, for the simple reason
that in these situations, in which they should be aware of things and in which they should notify
us, we may always be ahead of those people from whom they try to take advantage at the time of
getting knowledge or information. Ignorance is our community is something that cannot be
healed, but it can be improved. Nonetheless, we need to know how the internetwork and how to
manage it; we need to take into account that the internet is a place that attempts to increase our
addiction to it. So, we could conclude that we are getting very affected by how we depend on the
Internet our society had changed a lot thanks to this. It may be waiting for us from something
negative or positive, but it is more likely to depend on how each human being can become adept
at using it.

In order of ideas, we could take a lot of reflections to learn and consider if we are making
these mistakes and reinforce them, with the most important thing being acceptance and letting it
go in order to evolve as a person, and if for some reason someone has suffered, you could help
them with this valuable information. We have an opinion of ourselves, how we are as people, but
we do so little, preferring to never stop because we are afraid to face our worries. But this could
be a great opportunity to a change for those who do not know how to manage a dependency on
the internet and change the way people in continuing seeing this digital world, being more secure
and learning of the errors of others acquiring knowledge of this new world.
Juan Esteban Torres

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