Internet Addiction. Gambling, Social Networks and Sex

Table of Contents

Introduction

Internet Social Networking Addiction

Internet Sex Addiction

Internet Gambling Addiction

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Theinternet is one of the modern technology aspects. It was invented during the cold war to serve as a communication tool. Everyone at that time thought that the internet will be a beneficial device, but no one thought that this good friend can be a monster someday. The internet is a monster that destroys society and economy by providing many dangers.One of these dangers is the internet addiction. Addiction is the involvement in an activity which causes harm to a person’s body. Addiction also means using materials that cause a person’s disability to get rid of it. Internet addiction is “one of the technological addictions which are nonchemical (behavioral) addictions that involve human – machine interaction.”, (The Journal of sex research, 2001). It is the behavior of spending extremely long time surfing the internet. Internet addiction is one of the internet dangers which affect the society. It leads to people wasting their time by searching about online relationships, gaming, and pornography.

Furthermore, different types of people can be addicted to cyberspace such as adults, teenagers, children, men, and women. Although they have fun and get amusement while surfing the internet, they hurt themselves and their families. Internet addiction causes much harm such as lack of sleeping and eating, not doing duties and obligations on time, bad effects on social relationships, and health problems, for example, dry eyes and backache. Indeed, internet addiction promotes crimes and dangers on society and economy; it can be divided into several types such as internet social networking, internet sex, and internet gambling addictions.

Internet Social Networking Addiction

Social networking addiction is one aspect of internet addiction aspects. It means wasting a lot of time logging on social websites such as Face book and MySpace. Social networking addiction also promotes weak socialization among people. It stimulates people to make and to create new relationships electronically not in reality. In addition,internet social networking addiction declines participation in social and face – to – face activities which help people to gain more experience for their lives, and they can learn more about the society in which they live. Besides that internet social networking addiction can create many problems within family members such as killing and divorce. According to Introduction to Are Social Networking Sites Harmful? (2011), “On January 23, 2009 Edward Richardson...killed his wife…after changing her Face book relationship status from married to single.”

Furthermore, internet social networking can convince teenagers to provide private and personal information that might harm them. Social networking sites are the easiest way for sexual predators to attract victims. By using social websites sex predators can access innocent teenagers and children and encourage them to participate in dangerous activities such as posting sexual photos or having sex online. Moreover, online dating sites are another simple way for sex predators which they can use to attract adult victims. As a result, social networking addiction hurts society by dwindling face – to – face social relationships, by creating problems among people and family members, and by using teenagers and children to participate in dangerous activities.

Internet Sex Addiction

Sex addiction is another type of internet addiction which means spending a large amount of time surfing the internet for pornography. Online pornography includes all materials that are related to sex such as sexual photography, sexual chatting, porn videos, and erotic stories. Sexual materials are very dangerous for people especially for certain ages like children and teenagers. Internet sex includesinternet usersexchanging text-based sexual imaginations with each other. It promotes crimes in society and makes some people out of control.

In addition, internet sex addiction leads to crimes such as raping and kidnapping.“Rape is a violent crime which has many severe effects on the victim on both the long term and the short term.” (Crime and Punishment: Essential primary sources, 2006).Rape has many disadvantages on both health and economy. For instance, people who had been raped suffer from physical and psychological harms such as injures and broken parts of their bodies plus the psychological impact like trying to commit suicide many times. Additionally, each of these victims requires a medical care which costs a lot of money from the government budget. In fact, from the economical side “the annual rape victim costs are $127 billion.” (Crime and Punishment: Essential primary sources, 2006).

Furthermore, online pornography has a lot of harms on children. For instance, it has negative side effects on their mental and emotional health. It causes children to act out of their normal behavior, and it promotes the idea of rape in their minds. Children try to imitate what they see on the different types of media such as the internet. “When kids watch sex, it is no surprise they want to act out sexually.”(Internet Safety Organization, 2010) Therefore, internet sex addiction creates a society with a lot of criminals and damages children thinking which can generate a criminal generation.

Internet Gambling Addiction

Internet gambling is a type of internet addiction types which started in the mid of 1990s. It means wasting time and money with the help of internet. It is a bad side effect of the internet, and it has its own disadvantages on both the economy and the society even though it is a recent phenomenon. What’s more,“internet gambling sites don’t produce any benefit for social or education programs because they are not licensed or taxed by governments, and their companies are the only beneficiaries from their money.” (Gambling, 2007)Also it becomes a new issue in the workplaces. For instance, many companies and organizations have internet access for their employees so the employees have their chances to gamble online without any monitoring. Many employees gamble online and spend a lot of time during the work hours which can affect the work productivity and quality negatively.

In addition, internet gambling promotes money laundering. Money laundering means performing money transactions that hide all the related information of the transactions such as the identity, source, and destination of the washed money.Two factors make the internet gambling an easiest gate for money laundering criminals.The first factor is the high speed and the higher identity privacy with each money transaction. The second factor is the outside locations of online gambling companies which can’t be monitored by governments.

Moreover, internet gambling affects the society badly. Internet gamblers suffer from many problems more than non-internet gamblers. “Many studies have done in this field, and these studies have revealed that internet gamblers have poorer mental and physical health than those who are not internet gamblers.”(Gambling, 2007) All in all, internet gambling is another dangerous tool which can influence the economy and the society by harmful ways.

Conclusion

Although, internet can be a useful device if it used in the right manner, the society and economy get hurt because of the internet. The internet is a harmful device which hurts people by consuming their time, money, and health. One of the disadvantages is internet addiction illness. Internet addiction causes a lot of problems which affect the society and economy negatively. It attracts people to be addicted by many ways; for example, by browsing social networking, pornography, and gambling websites. Social networking websites stimulate people to communicate electronically rather than socially, and it promotes dangerous bonds and relationships. In addition, Sexual websites attack children and teenagers, and help to increase crimes ratio which affect the society economically and healthily. Furthermore, gambling websites affect the economy by lowering work productivity, and it affects peoples’ health by giving them a lot of stress.Limiting the time amount of internet usage every day can help to avoid addiction. Usingthe internetmoderately to get important information and to do significant tasks isvery useful. Social networking is very important in our life, but people should avoid ambiguity in it. In addition, they should practice face-to-face activities in order to keep strong social bonds. Moreover, avoiding sex and gambling websites is another right step on the right way to get rid of addiction. As a result, internet is a sword with two sides; if you know how to use it, it will be your trusty friend; otherwise, it will be your bitter enemy.

References

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