Argumentative Essay Against the Computer Society

It is hard to imagine a life without the internet and the computer. Most people in our modern western society use the computer every day in work, school and as a means of recreation. The computer has Change our every day lives drasticly. We now exchange information faster than ever before and anything we want to know is out there for us to fetch with only a click. But is the computer and the internet really to our advantage? I think not. I think that there are more disadvantages with the computer than most people might see. I think that the world would be a much better place without computers. We have never had so little human interaction as before. Yes, the internet is good for keeping in contact with friends and relatives, but we have to ask ourselves what happened to personal interaction. It is said that between 60 and 70 percent of what we interpret when we are talking to someone is through their body language. We learn very little about each other from the sterile type of talking in front of our computer screens. Humans are social beings and we need to be around people a lot more than what we are when we only spend our time together in cyber space. Being on Facebook and other community-pages will also make us think that we know people by seeing their pictures and reading their status updates. When we meet them we have a set interpretation of the person even though we might not have met them in years. We think that we know all about a person when we only know what they want us to know. This means that people never really get to know each other from experiences they have shared. We have never been this stressed ever. Before the age of computers, we could stop worrying about work as soon as we got home in the afternoon. Nowadays, as soon as we come home and have a chance to relax, we check our email accounts and maybe finish up some things we didn’t have time for at the office. The internet is also very distracting, which can be an obstruction in work, causing stress when the work piles up. We are never disconnected from work or school, we know that there is always a way for work to hunt us down and we know that not checking our email for letters from our boss or another co-worker is frowned upon or seen as irresponsible. Stress is a great reason to why people have heart diseases, digestive problems, are depressed and have trouble sleeping like never before. Alcohol is no longer the only drug being used as a means of relaxation. Marijuana and other drugs are also becoming more tolerated and common within society. I believe that the level of stress that we are exposed to every day is a trigger for drug and alcohol abuse. Stress isn’t the only reason why always being connected to the internet is unhealthy and dangerous. Our body is made for physical work. We are supposed to be using our bodies for hunting and other sorts of physical work. We are supposed to be able to run from larger predators and go up a hill without breathing heavily. But most people these days wouldn’t be able to manage this. We spend our whole day sitting in front a computer and when we're not, we sit by the dinner table, in class or in front of the television. Our bodies aren’t working as they should, on top of this; we eat a lot of greasy, processed food. There is no coincidence that obesity is now an epidemic disease in the western world. Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008 1,5 billion people were overweight and 65% of the world's population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight. Obesity can trigger heart diseases, cancer, strokes and many other illnesses. The absolute freedom of press on the internet is seen by something good and something that helps democracy that we should encourage. But when there are no rules or regulations about what people may write on the internet, and who is to view what is said on forums, blogs etc. things that are demoralizing and directly damaging will be said. Most children nowadays have access to pornographic material, gambling sites, pro-anorexia forums, pedophiles and harmful propaganda of all sorts. And there is no way for parents to know what their children are up to once they have clicked the ‘delete' button in the history archive of the computer. And it’s not only the children who are at risk when using the internet. We now move almost all of our banking and communicating to the internet which means that if we aren’t careful, someone might be reading our emails, or hacking our bank accounts. The reason why we should re-evaluate all this time spending on the internet and by the computer is first of all because we have to socialize more face-to-face with the people we love and cherish. Secondly because it is very stressful to always be accessible through the internet. The third reason is because moving is a vital part of the human health and obesity is a growing epidemic and finally because we are always exposed to a risk when going online.