These days, most people all around the world have access internet. Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices, and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access was once rare but has grown almost exponentially in the past few years. In the year 1995, barely 0.05 percent of the world had access to it. However, entering the 21st century,  many more people had access to it, and in 2014, almost half of the world’s population had internet access. Since internet had only become common and used widely recently, the current generation is the only generation that has had access to internet their entire lives.

The internet has impacted the current generation in several ways, with both positive and negative consequences. For education and learning, it benefits the current generation by allowing them to research and study at any given time. This gives them a lot of freedom to take in more info and save time studying at any place they want. However, previous generations did not have the freedom of studying anytime. They had to go to libraries to borrow textbooks or buy other books/study sources from stores, instead of being able to pull up presentations and articles from their home. This can save both time and money for the current generation and make it less of a hassle. Some people even argue that internet access is now critical to students, due to the variety and mass amount of information on the internet. The United Nations even goes as far as to believe that internet access is a human right. Without the internet, students will lose out on many crucial subjects of data and also be far behind the other students.

Regardless, there are still many negative consequences of early internet access. A particular dangerous one is that everything on the internet is very hard to erase and can technically stay forever. This can be especially detrimental to children, as they gain access to the internet at very early ages, with no prior guides to what is dangerous and what is safe. They can be careless and can end up harming themselves through this way. There are many dangerous predators and creeps online that may target children for their vulnerability. Children may also accidently download some sort of malware or virus that can open up sensitive information to other people online. There are also many cyberbullies online, which can end up destroying young children’s’ mentalities, and even end up making them marring themselves physically. This is a huge problem especially now, as shown in many studies and graphs recently.

The easy access to internet and the wide variety of open information, both safe and dangerous, is a very controversial topic. Some people believe that this can influence children in a beneficial way and help them in the future, while others believe that this is more harmful due to the higher suicide rates and depression rates among teens. Overall, internet access is a subject with both positive and negative consequences depending solely on the user.