A Relationship With the Internet
Over the past year, a lot of things in the world have changed due to the global pandemic that has forced many places into lockdown for extended periods of time. Because of that, things like attending school or work and maintaining or making relationships with people have become extremely internet-based. With whole countries going into quarantine and requiring people to stay in their houses to limit their risk of exposure to COVID, internet usage shot up in many ways for both entertainment and everyday activities like attending classes or work. Due to only being able to interact on the internet, there was an increased usage of social media as people attempted to still be able to interact with their friends and family while staying socially distanced. While for some people that access to the internet and the ability to keep up with others was easy, for others that ability was not as easy to come by and struggled to keep up with how the world had suddenly changed and in a way made the internet a necessity for many people to have access to. Some people were able to maintain their relationships, in a way, like they had been before lockdown while others struggled to keep up with friends and family only over the internet. There are many people who prefer physically keeping in contact with friends and family over only being able to contact them over the internet and it has created a struggle for many of those people as we pass the year mark of lockdown. It depends greatly on the person you are talking to for how much they are struggling with maintaining relationships online over in person.
Because of how we are still dealing with the need for social distancing, the internet has become a major part of serving human’s need for contact with other people and finding entertainment where we previously went out to public places to entertain ourselves. People are still able to keep in contact with people on the internet as well as meet new people and possibly make more friends through those new people. For the people unable to travel to see their families because of travel restrictions or health risks, the internet allows for them to still talk to their family without any of the risks of having to physically see them. While it may not be the same, the internet still is able to foster connections between people while still keeping everyone safe from the risks of going out in public. The internet has also been able to help with keeping people up to date with what is happening in the world especially in relation to any COVID news that comes out. Social media allows to spread information at rates faster than news outlets and with people’s increased use of social media, the news is able to spread at increasingly faster rates.
In my case when quarantine started, I had not been too worried about it and thought “oh, we’ll be back to normal soon, it won’t take that long to fix this.” Here we are a year later still experiencing lockdown and its effects. I have definitely noticed some of my own habits change as quarantine has progressed over the past year and things like college have changed so significantly that I have not even been to campus in months, unlike last year where I was on campus every day for my classes. Like many students, I have also wanted to do school work less and less as the months pass and the homework piles on more and more each day. While initially I struggled with maintaining and creating relationships online with others, I slowly became more comfortable with it as the weeks passed and I made new friends in communities I found online that I still talk to now. The communities I have found and joined over quarantine have definitely helped me to stay sane and not lose my mind over being stuck inside for long and struggling with school work.
While COVID has caused many changes to how the world operates, it also became a big push for the world to explore the uses of the internet and improve upon what we already had. Social media became a central part of many people’s lives in an attempt to keep in contact with others and new ways for people to attend events like concerts were created to allow the world to continue on without coming to a complete standstill. Many opportunities were no longer available with lockdown, but just as many opportunities came up to accommodate the new situation people found themselves in. Overall, the internet became the gateway for the world to carry on as best as it could when the ability for everyone to safely go outside was not available.
