Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “Overall, the widespread use of the internet has a mostly positive effect on life in today’s world.” Use reasons and details to support your opinion.

Although the internet has its good and bad sides I overally agree with the given statement that the positive effect of the internet outweighs the negative sides. First of all, using the internet we have the possibility to communicate all over the world. Just imagine how most people would not have believed just 30 years ago that it is possible that I am taking this TOEFL test while sitting at home in Germany and it is corrected by someone staying possibly thousands of kilometres away. But this is not all. It is even possible to interact live with each other by calling. Thus the internet is a great invention for everyone who has family or friends not living close by. The opportunity to read, listen and talk to someone wherever they are is very comforting. I am sure that I would not have been brave enough to make the decision to study in the US next year if the internet did not exist and it was expensive and quite an effort to contact my parents at home. Secondly, the internet makes information easily accesible for everyone and all over the world. As a digital native I honestly cannot imagine how people studied or prepared presentations when they could not use google in order to get information. For most questions I can just type them into a web searching machine (which of course not has to be necessarily Google since I am of the opinion that companies such as Google are rather a bad effect of the internet) and I will get an answer immediately. For example, if I have to take the train the next day I do not have to go to the train station in order to know when and where my train departs instead I can look it up at home. This easy and reliable accesibilty of information makes our life much more comfortable and saves a lot of time which we can use to gather even more information on other interesting topics. I am sure that this question is a very controversial one which could be discussed in a lot more detail than done in this essay. However, the reasons given lead me to the conclusion that my initial thought of the internet being primarily a positive invention is still valid.