Last week, I wrote about how the Internet is alive and the opportunity to have an online presence.

The distinction between a content producer and consumer was also touched on. It is here that the so-called darker side of Internet may raise its ugly head.

With so many things to do online, there’s bound to be issues of staying focussed on what’s really important. Unfortunately, it can’t be help that netizens — yeah, that’s what users in this connected virtual world are known as — are wasting time.

Because there’s so much fun stuff going around!

Distractions on The Internet

Indeed, there are time wasters to be found online, though how one chooses to view them can differ from person to person.

This topic itself can probably fill an entire article of a few thousand words. I’d just focus on 3 key observations here:

  • Social media
  • Online gaming
  • Online shopping

If you just observe people riding the MRT or buses, those with craned necks and eyes glued to their mobiles are invariably engaged in activities related to the above. Sometimes, they would switch attention amongst the three when one activity becomes boring.

And I’ll bet you that the office crowd are as involved, not just during breaks but inside work hours too! Shhh… don’t tell the boss 🙂

Social Media

Anyone who has been online, especially using a mobile device, can hardly escape from social media distractions. The big 2 to me are Facebook and YouTube.

On Facebook, a user easily transforms into a “busybody” minding other people’s business. People get so hooked in looking out for what others have to say, be it from strangers or real friends alike.

That’s the power of having an established online presence; in this case, the social media kind.

Speaking of friends, a huge number of them are likely to be people a user doesn’t even know but find it worthwhile to “befriend” to stay in the loop of what’s happening to these “friends”. Your online circle does play a part in how much juicy news you’d get daily from out there!

And then there’s YouTube, that ever-popular destination to go searching for videos of movies and MTVs (that were uploaded without permission of the owners), loads of songs, gigs, funny self-made clips, etc. You name it, YouTube’s likely to have it.

Between the two, you can easily spend — more like waste! — a few hours each day trying to catch up! I know because I nearly went there. And that’s how I came up with an acronym to challenge others, posted on none other than Facebook itself:

Lay Off Facebook TodaY

Online Gaming

Anyone who’s played Candy Crush, Angry Birds, even good old Tetris, will know the draw of games. Add in multi-player capability, social sharing, co-operative play and what nots, and suddenly it becomes too hard to stay away from online gaming.

Bear in mind that the game creators know your weakness and therefore have designed into their products various lures to keep you interested. One obvious one is a regular dose of free in-game tokens which can allow you to play on — and so you’d be looking out for these at known time intervals.

Another sneaky one is the social sharing feature. Being able to tell your friends your game progress and ask them for assistance helps the game gain attention and more players.

It was never really about you, the gamer. But your online presence in the game community helps to lend a personal touch to getting other people interested and started. That does count.

For those who are drawn into online games of chance, it can really turn out to be an addictive affair that totally wastes away precious time. Those with in-app purchases to allow you to top up your game currency is bad enough; I can’t imagine the others which involve money outright. Better keep your credit cards locked up!

Online Shopping

Last but not least, browsing online for items on discount is yet another activity that few can resist. People can spend loads of time going through items as if they were flipping a photo album. I reckon it’s more window shopping than real buying, but who would want to miss out on deals?

Funny thing is online offers are here, there, everywhere… and available everyday! There’s actually no need to stay so close to online shopping like there’s no tomorrow. Yet, too many succumb to this time waster — probably a carry-over from real-world window shopping habits, albeit this can be done anytime you fancy.

Enough said!

Internet Has Lasting Memory — Discipline Required!

Many people are oblivious to this fact: the Internet has better memory than the most-gifted elephant. How so?

Anything and everything that anyone puts online nearly has a life of its own, way beyond what’s intended. For example, if you posted something to Facebook, regretted it almost immediately so got the post deleted, it is not necessarily true that what you wrote is gone forever from the Web.

Quite the opposite! Though you might no longer see your post on the timeline, someone, somewhere, who is connected to you, might have seen it and shared it online. Or made a copy of the post, especially if it had some controversial content. And this copy may get passed around in other social media circles outside of yours.

So no, deleting a bad post isn’t the answer. Not writing something you’d regret later is. Which all means you have to act responsibly and write only what you would want a pair of eyes, many pairs, even the whole world, to see and read. And possibly keep!

Plus, don’t share posts from other users just because they are juicy or attention-getting. You may look or feel good for doing so, for a short while; if anything back fires, fingers may point back to you as the person who started spreading sensational stuff!

Get this thought into your head sooner than later: post and share in a responsible manner. It could jolly well save you some day.

Won’t We Run Out of Storage Someday?

This is probably another issue not many have paid attention to.

Posting to social media sites or using free Email services mean that these Internet properties (of others) are providing you with free storage for your data, be it text, images/photos, videos, audio recordings, data files, etc.

Now, we aren’t talking about ordinary storage capacities like what you may have on your high-end PC or even that huge network-addressable storage (NAS) of yours. We are talking gigantic sizes that can keep up with 300 millions photo uploads each day on Facebook — look at fact #13 in this zephoria.com report.

Just that upload activity alone can consume 30,000GB of space, assuming a conservative file size of just 100KB per photo. Over a month, 1000 TB (Terabyte) or 1 Petabyte (PB) of storage would be used up. That’s just photos alone! And videos take up way much more space!!

From another perspective, Google is estimated (by Cirrus Insight) to be holding some 10 to 15 Exabytes (or EB) of data for its Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail and other Internet services. One EB = 1000 PB = 1 million TB. These numbers are totally out of this world.

And Big G continues to add storage to their server farms at various locations worldwide daily!

Haven’t We Bullied Nature Enough?

Now, energy is needed to run these electronic assemblies; coolant is needed to keep them from overheating and failing; physical space is needed to build structures to hold everything in.

Wouldn’t there come a day when the Earth can’t support any more of this? Sure, there’s now greener energy; and some smart guys are building their structures in oceans of water.

I reckon that day will come. Because Nature has already been hurt by the greed of humans. Even if they figured how to outsmart her, the price to be paid will be a hefty one!

Afterwards, human kind — and the Internet — will become leaner but smarter with what they should keep. For sure, junk will be thrown out. Lots of it! Is there any point storing useless stuff?

Internet is Here to Stay

No doubt, the Internet is not going to disappear. In fact, it is only getting larger, and closer to all of us.

But there’s no need to fear this web in cyberspace. For it holds the key to many things previously deemed improbable: very low cost or even free communications medium; access to knowledge and info, freely and quickly; learning open to the masses; business transactions around the clock; etc.

If you learn how to use the Internet wisely, then it’s yours for the taking. Always.

Take advantage of that vast pool of knowledge out there. Soak as much of it in as you can, but selectively from sources validated as authority and deemed trustworthy.

Noteworthy: “Fake” news has become one of the new darker side manifestations on the Web. This interesting write-up has a list of websites which you may want to be mindful of: http://www.bullshido.net/list-bs-fake-biased-news-sites/

A good portion of it could be rehashed content and some just plain junk. As you go, you’d train your eyes… and brain.

On the same note, freely access experts on topics of your interests; and mingle with like-minded people online. There’s no better age to learn than now, at your own pace and picking what you want. Best part: mostly for free!

But let me reiterate before I end this article — Be totally responsible for all your actions on the Internet. For it truly has lasting memory.

Use it well, my friend 🙂