An Internet - Fueled Illusion Reflection Essay Example

The wave of technology has swept away many aspects of our lives today. Most of our activities of individuals and, corporations revolve around the internet. The internet is part of our daily lives. If it's not ordering goods online, it is online banking. Technology-based firms have realized our dependence on the internet and, they also want the piece of the cake. This is why the firms are putting the tremendous resource to come up with better faster and, reliable internet services each and every day. These days when you ask someone something he doesn't know he will tell you, "let me check it on the internet". They will go straight to the internet search engine to find out what you were asking them. How viable is the information found on the internet? Are we losing our grip on life because of the internet search tool engine?

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Information is key in any society. The major issue comes when one has a false information. To him, because he searched it on the internet it is correct. The search tool engine is so powerful that some individuals may feel nimble-witted whereas the information they hold is false or show nothing. It is quite a hard task to have facts about everything and thus, some information has doubtful authenticity and cannot be relied on (Kennedy). The dynamics of how information flows on the internet today is that it always consort against veracity. There is also a lot of information out there on the internet that it's hard to discern what is legit and propaganda. When one wants to make a bomb he just goes to the search engine, you want to know more about a new product you also go there.

Self-esteem can be defined as how we think when we look at ourselves. When we look at our abilities are we confidence. It is critical to our health to have a good self-esteem. When one has a poor self-esteem it can lead to depression. Research carried out by psychologist has shown that internet use has an effect on cognition self-esteem (Kennedy). In other words how we perceive ourselves. For instance, one can look up for information on the internet and make the assumption that the personal knowledge gained is legitimate. This leads to the self-assessment of one's knowledge. When one does an assessment and it is not positive, it will lead to poor self-esteem. Poor self-esteem will lead him to stress and depression and More than one thousand participants were also used in another research (Kennedy). And it was shown that they believe to be more knowledgeable than people who used other sources. The study concluded that they are suffering from a halo effect (Kennedy). Halo effect occurs when you believe you have more knowledge in a subject which is not your specialty.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the digital world has blessed us. But it seems the simple act of the internet such engine seems to make people believe they are knowledgeable. As a matter of fact, when they were given a link to answer some questions online they did not exhibit high levels of cognitive self-esteem as thought. Thus the use of the search engine does not make you an expert. The search engine makes works easier but we should approach it with caution.

Work cited

Kennedy, Shirley. "An Internet-Fueled Illusion". Information Today, 2015, p. 1, Accessed 13 Dec 2018.