I have been using the internet even since I was around 5 years old. I remember the old desktop monitors and giant computers we had in our elementary and middle schools. I remember first using the “proper” way to look things up for academic purposes when I was only in elementary school. I never had to struggle searching through a library using the Dewey decimal system to conduct research, every bit of information I needed was always available to me. Of course as I grew up technology became more and more immersed with my every day life. When I was little it was just the desktop, now it’s my phone that I carry with me everywhere and my watch that I wear a lot of the time.
I think that the internet is everything that you can google. If there’s a way you can make a link to it, it’s the internet. I don’t think of the internet as something that takes up physical space. The internet is not tangible to me, it’s not something I can touch. I can easily interact with it, and I even used it to meet my awesome boyfriend (thanks Bumble). But it doesn’t exist in a physical space.
Because the internet is so easily accessible, I find myself not using my brain very much in order to think things through. If I have a question, even if it’s a matter of opinion, I find myself asking the internet. I don’t think that the internet is making us stupider, but I do think it makes us have extra time that we don’t often use wisely. I don’t think the internet has the ability to make us stupid, I think how we use the internet can. If we spend all the extra time we have thanks to technology just scrolling watching bird videos on TikTok then we aren’t doing our neurons any favors. I do think that we can use our technology in beautiful, productive ways, and even when we just use it for entertainment that isn’t a terrible thing.