Seven Reasons Why We Love The Internet


Some time between 1936 and 1938 a German man named Konrad Zuse is thought to have invented the first ever computer. We’ve come a long, long way since then.

It wasn’t until 1983 that researchers started to formulate what was to become the world wide web. Seven years later, the internet started to take the form that we all know and recognise today.

Fast-forward to 2019 and the internet offers endless possibilities, we can shop, listen to our favourite music, keep in touch with old friends and hone our creative skills.

We all have our own browsing habits, things we couldn’t live without (perhaps that’s a bit dramatic) but here are a few of our favourite things that we definitely couldn’t do before the internet:

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Next day delivery

Not having to navigate infuriatingly busy shopping centres and freezing cold high streets is definitely one of the high points. Queuing at 6am for the boxing day sales? Ha, no thank you.

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Streaming

Having access to our favourite shows, movies and musicians is something that’s easy to take for granted most of the time. Have you watch daytime telly recently? Exactly.

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Memes

Meme culture is one of the most wonderfully bizarre and best things to happen in the 21st century. A big claim, but we stand wholeheartedly by it.

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Fan theories

If you haven’t spent hours getting lost in the r/FanTheories thread on Reddit have you really ever lived? PS anyone got ANY idea how the new Avengers is going to pan out?

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News

This is a biggy – we’re now more clued up on what’s going in the world around us, many of us are more politically aware and those in power are forced to be more transparent than ever before.

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Gaming

Remember the unbridled joy of getting home from school and jumping straight on Xbox Live to play Call of Duty with the friends you left 30 minutes ago? Yep, that.

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Apps

Sure this is a pretty broad one but they weren’t kidding when they said there is literally an app for EVERYTHING. Genuinely useful stuff too, banking, travel, translation – ever tried to navigate a foreign country with just a map? It is not fun.

For all those reasons it’s hard to imagine a world without the web at the tip of our fingers. That’s not to say it isn’t without its dangers, with something so vast there are always going to be drawbacks.

It’s pretty easy to say the internet is dangerous and that social media is bad – to some extent that’s all true. The positives clearly outweigh the negatives though, that’s the message conveyed through Safer Internet Day.

This year’s SID celebrations put a focus on young people online, pushing the slogan “Together for a better internet” – a call to action for all stakeholders to join together and play their part in creating a better internet for everyone.

To mark this year’s Safer Internet Day, TikTok, the world’s leading short video platform, launches #BetterMeBetterInternet, a global challenge to support the annual initiative.

TikTok’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past few months, offering budding content creators a new platform to express themselves. With this kind of hype comes high levels of responsibility – something which the company has put at the forefront of what they do.

“We’re delighted to work with a range of partners, including TikTok, to raise awareness of a safer and better internet on Safer Internet Day 2019. By working “Together for a better internet” on SID, and indeed all year round, we can empower people to use technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively.” Sarah Willoughby, Content and Communications Expert/SID Campaign Coordinator, European Schoolnet.

We’d love to hear your favourite things about the internet, your favourite apps, your favourite websites – let us know in the comments!

 

[Featured image: Pexels]

 

Part of a paid partnership with Tik Tok.