Is the internet a trustworthy source of information? is it reliable as print?

                                              Wikipedia vs History books

        If I would ask you “who owns the city of Jerusalem, Jewish or Muslim”, the quickest way for you to find out the answer would to go search on the internet. When you put the topic in the Google and Bing search box, instantaneously, thousands of web page that are “related” to the topic comes up. The first link that’s sitting on the very front spot, is Wikipedia. You click on the link without any hesitation because 1, you’ve seen a Wikipedia page before, it’s everywhere, and 2, it’s at the front, so it must be very popular. But wait! It’s the information that you’re about to look at correct? Can you really trust Wikipedia? If not, can you trust the information that’s floating on the internet?

To begin with, Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia with over 17 million articles, 262 different language versions, and over 3.5 million articles are written in the English language. Millions of people around the globe go on to Wiki every day to learn about almost anything because it’s very efficient, fast, and free. However, the accuracy of the information of Wiki is questionable because Wiki’s articles are mostly made by anonymous contributors. Moreover, they are not required to provide any identification, no ID, no postal code, or not even an email address. Nevertheless, Wiki has received a fair rating by experts. Here’s a quote from an article that speaks about the reliability of Wiki:

“In 2005, the peer-reviewed journal Nature asked scientists to compare Wikipedia's scientific articles to those in Encyclopaedia Britannica—"the most scholarly of encyclopedias," according to its own Wiki page. The comparison resulted in a tie; both references contained four serious errors among the 42 articles analyzed by experts.”-How Accurate is Wikipedia, by Natalie Wolchover.

On the other hand, books such as history books are even worse than Wiki. Most of the history books are written by the people who wanted to pass down their perspective and ideology.  To explain this theory of mine, here’s a quote, “History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.” - Napoleon Bonaparte. Unlike the history books that are made and survived through agreements, Wiki’s articles could be altered by any person.

In short, there’s no 100% honesty on the internet nor the books. Wiki offers more of a general idea while books express one person’s.

Is the Internet dumbing us down and making us lazier? Or is it empowering the masses by giving access to more information?

 Is the Internet dumbing us down? Or is it empowering the masses? Like any societal advancement there are pros and cons to everything. The answer is solely depended on the users. Who has time to read entire articles now a days? Instead, we only read snippets. And if we are interested in it, we will investigate more into it. With this lifestyle, people were able to save more time from reading a newspaper every morning, like old people do. However, it also can make people dumber. People might become a "headline readers" and not gain any information through a valuable source. Furthermore, it doesn't mean that Internet is making people lazier because Internet is very accessible and easy to use. Some people who grown up without Internet might say people are lazier nowadays because they are not looking up the information through books. On the other hand, nowadays people can stay at their house and go groceries shopping. It is proven that, since the Internet was invented, obesity has increased significantly by making people not to move around except their fingers and eyeballs.
In short, Internet can dumb us down and make us lazier, but without Internet, the world would have not been socially developed.

                  Is Internet making us a couch potato and isolating us from the others

  Our day starts on the internet and ends on the internet. We have done a significant progress in developing our technology and making our lives easier day by day. A few decades ago people preferred sending business letters to the companies which were highly expensive especially sending it to different country, but now people prefer sending emails and texts as its highly efficient. Now a day’s people don’t have time to talk to their loved ones, but have enough time to post a picture on Instagram and reply to 20 comments. There are a lot of apps that connect people around the world which are mostly known as Social Media’s such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat to name a just few. There are thousands of apps that connect people around the globe. But what about people around you? Most of us prefer sending texts to our friends instead of calling them or talking to them in person because we have been introduced to apps that are so addictive that we are losing people around us.

  Today all of us use internet for different things but mostly we use it when we are doing our homework’s. A lot of times people have suggested me to use the internet as it’s really easy to find the answers for a question. All you have to do is google the question and in the next 0.9 seconds and an answer is there for you. I have personally done this a couple of times when I am unable to find an answer. This saves my time and helps me to focus on a different question. This is a temporary benefit but as google gives me the answer I blindly trust it and without questioning it I wrote it down. This method is making the teens more inactive, rather than finding the answer in the book they simply prefer googling it as it is more convenient and a lot easy. Because internet is so easy to access nowadays its making us more lazier.

  Internet has a lot of branches and the most popular one is YouTube. It’s so interesting to see how we can watch our TV shows on this website in our own spare time. This website is so entertaining that there is no age barrier. It’s great for entertainment but it’s sad when people prefer watching YouTube video’s than going out. My five year old sister sometimes prefers watching Disney shows on YouTube than going out and playing with her friends in the park. She thinks being inactive is okay ,but if now she thinks that it’s okay what’s going to happen when she is 15.Is she going to be couch potato, and isolate herself from others. And become lazier day by day. There are many examples to support this but it is for sure that one day there will be no kid in the park, no teens on the beach, no adults in a party room as most of us would be engaged on the internet and feel no need to talk to someone. What would you like to look back at texts that never mattered or the memories that can’t be described?

Internet can easily overwhelm our ability to think and reason

Is the Internet dumbing us down and making us lazier? Or is it empowering the masses by giving access to more information?

Will customers drive miles to buy a product when they can simply click on eBay and the product will be delivered to their house? Will students carry a pile of books from the library when they know the verb “Google” and the term “Wikipedia”? Will you pull out your pen and use your whole hand to write an essay, worrying your handwriting is not neat at all, when you can just slightly move your fingers and submit a perfectly written (in terms of handwriting) essay via the Internet? Most likely not. At least right now, I am typing these words instead of writing them. 

As the most forward-looking media now days, Internet improves the pace and the quality of our life in so many ways, but simultaneously, the fact that it is driving people lazier is also undeniable. Physically, people are doing less work and exercises because doing so is inconvenient, and plus more and more activities can be done at home. Further more, the Internet will very likely diminish human’s ability to think creatively and independently. Since Internet is a free platform for netizens to communicate, people can find all kinds of “knowledge”, whether it is valuable information, biased opinions, extreme assertions, superficial comments… and more. However, instead of using Internet as an extra help to start one’s thinking, many people tend to “choose” or “follow” one of the millions of thoughts on the Internet. Even more sadly, many people seem unaware of their changes from thinking independently to solely rely on other people’s ideas. They feel like they have gained new knowledge, but their lazy behaviors more or less lead to poorly constructed thoughts and views. I would argue that Internet is a new form of assimilation: unlike the children in residential schools who were forced to adapt a new culture, people now days choose to be assimilated, which is harmful for especially the young generations who have not yet developed their own value systems. Indeed, it is ironic how sometimes access to more information and databases does not lead to greater knowledge and deeper understanding but the opposite.

This is a group of creative photography by the French photographer Antoine Geiger. He took the photos on ordinary streets of Paris, and describes the use of technology and Internet as a type of “self-alienation” that “has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as aesthetic pleasure of the first order. ”

The idea Geiger conceptualized through his art work is similar to my point: many people’s obsession for  the Internet turns them lazy to the degree that face-to-face socialization is becoming a rare act to do. The variety of information on the Internet can easily overwhelm our ability to think and reason. 

The Lazy Internet

Is the Internet dumbing us down and making us lazier? Or is it empowering the masses by giving access to more information?

Is this our future?

Well it doesn't have to be, if we use the internet wisely. The internet can be a source for us to be lazy at home and not accomplish anything in our day. Us teens use the internet for things like Instagram, Twittier and other social medias for fun, when there is a lot more to the internet than just that. People also use internet to buy clothes, food, to pay the bills and a lot more things. This is just making us sit on the couch instead of getting out of our houses.                                                                                             The scariest thing for me is that nowadays, when we don’t know something, or can’t solve a problem, we just look for it on google, we don’t try to deal with the issue, we are starting not to use our heads anymore. I’m a student so I’m experiencing this everyday: when we are not sure about an answer of one exercise or unsure of an answer we gave, we don’t try to go over the question, we just see if we can find the answer online. So I think that internet is making our brain  less active.

However, thanks to the internet, we can integrate our studies with videos on youtube that can make some subjects easier, or with some scientific articles that look inside a topic deeply. This makes us more knowledgeable.                                                                           Another main function of internet is that it connects people. You can talk or chat with your friends in every single moment of your life, you can share thoughts, jokes and pictures with them. It also connects people that are in opposite parts of the world, we can get information about what is happening around the world in a few seconds. This is the way I use internet the most. I live six thousands kilometres away from my family and my friends but I’m in contact with them every day.

Beatrice Malacart

Is the Internet a trustworthy source of information? Is it as reliable as print?

Information can be collected from countless sources, including books, Internet, media and people. Although it might vary depending on the researcher's needs, some of these mediums are convenient and reliable, while others are not. The Internet and books are one of the most widely used method of collecting information. When negotiating about the mediums' convenience, for some people, books may be more convenient than the Internet and for others, the Internet may be more convenient than books. However, on the other hand, when discussing about their reliability, printed copies of information seems like a better and more thoughtful choice of option. 

The information in the books is much more reliable and accurate than that of the Internet. The reason for this is that on Internet, everyone could give his/her suggestions or opinions about a subject, and its reader might not be sure of whether the information is correct. There are definitely reliable sources in the Internet, however, it is very difficult to find out and differ correct information from false information.

An example of unreliable digital media is Yahoo! Answers. In some instances, people could grasp accurate information, however, because Yahoo! does not evaluate and guarantee the accuracy of the responses on their website, its information is not always correct. Similar websites such as Answers.com or Wikipedia could be a great starting point to gather ideas, however, because these information are opinion-based, they might not be the most ideal websites to make references.

The main reason that the digital media is less reliable than print media is because anyone can upload something to the digital media. Online, one can say something without backing it up with evidence, whereas in printed copies such as reference books, stating the information's source is absolutely mandatory.

In comparison to digital mediums, the complicated processes of print publications, such as revising and editing gives books an advantage in reliability. Books are strictly revised about 6 to 8 times by publishing professionals. Not only books, but research essays, magazines, or newspapers are needed to be researched and proof-read multiple times for the actual publication process to occur. The authors of the print mediums are confident of its content and reliability. 

Ultimately, although both print and digital medias have its advantages and disadvantages, in general, print media contains much more reliable information. This is for the reason that print sources are processed through the stages of editing and reviewing by professionals, whereas Internet sources are the space provided for everyone to share their ideas without the need of referencing. 

Although the reliability of information definitely matters in a lot of cases, one cannot deny the fact that the print and digital medias all have an ideal time and place for its use.

Internet vs Print

Is the Internet a trustworthy source of information? Is it as reliable as print?

     Both Internet and print are great tools that are available to us when it comes to obtaining new information. Print is something that our ancestors have been using since nearly the beginning of time. It is often considered to be a reliable source of information as most of the time, for something to get printed, it must undergo various stages, for example, the editing stage. However, information that we receive through the print can be outdated and biased. Not to mention that print is not very convenient way of receiving information. For example, carrying a dictionary around seems to be irrational when you can just simply download a free dictionary app on your phone.  

 On the other hand though, the Internet is highly convenient, as it is something that we can access nearly everywhere, provided that we have an Internet connection and a device.  It is what we use to communicate with friends, play games, watch videos, and of course, receive new information, let it be something simple like the how many grams are in a kilogram, or a complex topic, such as bond hybridization. Through the power of the internet, you can become your own educator, with just a few clicks of the mouse. Many people would argue that Internet is great way of obtaining new knowledge. For example, I personally use the Internet everyday as an aid in my studies. A great place to help with grasping new concepts is Khan Academy. From watching a ten minute video, I am able to finally understand an idea instead wasting my time by reading the textbook over and over again, my efforts in vain. However, when using the Internet to help with studying, you must proceed with caution. If you just simply look for help on sites such as Yahoo Answers, anybody with a Yahoo account can answer your question, and you will not know if they are right or wrong. The Internet has other uses as well when it comes to getting new information. Many people, myself included, favour receiving their daily news via the Internet rather than through newspaper. Instead of having to leaf through the whole entire newspaper and being disappointed when there is nothing interesting, you can simply select the topic that you are interested in, such as sports, economics, or health. There are many reputable news sites out there that you can surf at either no cost or for a small fee per month. Generally, the Internet is a reliable source of information. Sometimes though, through its convenience, people put up wrong information, which spreads quickly over the web. If you are careful though, you will be able to rely on the Internet as a source of information that is as reliable as print. 

The Internet. Are we becoming dumb?

"The internet makes dumb people dumber, and smart people smarter." - Unknown

The effect of the internet ultimately comes down to the way we use it. The quote above captures how ones view of the internet can be distorted based upon what they are searching. Many people ask if it is making us lazier and whether things are virtually handed to us, which is understandable. Now a days if a homework question, or any problem arises within our lives the go to answer is "just google it". Im guilty of doing this quite often, the world is at ur fingertips why not use it to our advantage right? But sometimes the internet can actually prevent us from thinking outside the box and critically. If we are stuck on a math question or riddle, google is there to save the day instead of us using previous knowledge and logical thinking to solve the problem. Therefore, our brain has extra unused cells and energy which many say are the main factors to teenage procrastination and being easily distracted. While others argue that the extra brain energy can be used for other aspect in life, and also to save us time.  The internet allows millions of people to be connected and to gain information from the comfort of their homes. Researcher are able to share and gather valuable date while living in various countries, communication has become quick and easy and were even able to complete school online. Students are able to complete various courses online and those who wish to pursue a degree later on in life are able to achieve that goal while maintaining a family. But in my opinion one of the best parts is the online shopping( expected from a girl).  Personally, I like to take my time when shopping and really analyze the prices, clothes and deals but I'm too lazy to leave the house (cmon aren't we all) so online shopping is perfect. I can buy everything i could possibly want from my bedroom. The internet is also extremely useful in other areas, from getting the education everyone deserves to being able to get an inside access to our favourite celebrity's life, its all possible with just the click (or well multiple clicks haha) of a button! And finally the part of internet we spend hours on and love, the worldwide media accessibility. From youtube to the many social media platforms, its become a daily part of our life and keeps us all connected. Yes i know it can sometimes be distracting but the usage of it depends on the user. The productivity and personal gains that the internet has given to the world are tremendous.  Like any invention the internet can be used for good but also for bad, maintaining a balance between the internet life and reality is what is important.

Is the Internet a trustworthy source of information? Is it as reliable as print?

Is the Internet a trustworthy source of information? 

Yes and No

The internet is a huge frontier of information with at least 1 million terabytes of data. For those who don't know how big that is, it is huge. With that much data roaming around the world just on the internet, there are not enough services to maintain them ALL and keep them trustworthy. So to answer the question, yes it can be trustworthy where there are services to maintain the data and no where there are no services. An example of a trustworthy information would be in educational data bases such as ebsco or google scholar. These are just two of the many different services that hold and maintain trustworthy data. Some of you may wonder, in elementary school we used wikipedia a lot for information towards a project. Well, in elementary school, there is not enough funds to get access to the high end data bases and the information is also far too complex for children. Wikipedia is a website where people input their information on a topic and the program chooses the most common answer and displays it. This is also how google works. When you search something up, it brings up the most common websites and information. This may or may not be true, but it is the most common. 

Is it as reliable as print?

Personally I think that the internet is not as reliable as print. This is because all prints usually have to go though multiple revisements and editing processes before being published, whereas the posts on the internet as just done then and there, not a lot of revising. Even with all the services available to make information trustoworthy on the internet it is hard to see the internet as a whole to be more reliable because the services can only maintain a few hundred thousand terabytes of data and the internet is at least, minimum, 1 million terabytes large. 

Over all I believe that it is up to how the user uses the internet, if you know how to use it and where to look for information, you can say that the internet is trustworthy and more reliable than print but vice versa if you are a lazy user, it can be untrustworthy and less reliable than print. 

Is the Internet dumbing us down and making us lazier? Or is it empowering the masses by giving access to more information?

The answer for this question is pretty unpredictable because it depends on how people are using it daily. For the people who don’t have any works to do, they will jump on their computers and surf on the internet from day to night. You might think that they are lazy, but they are not. They just literally don’t have anything to do. From this case, do you think the Internet makes people lazier or just helps people to spend off their time? Yet, in the other hand, people who use it too much will be dependent on the usefulness of the Internet. They stop thinking before doing something, instead they will ask Google to help them out quickly. And again, what if they are not patient enough to think of an answer for a whole day, so eventually the Internet is their saviour of the day. It would be a waste of time if you kept solving a problem by yourself without knowing anything. You might ask somebody else to help you, but they are not always there for you to ask. Therefore, why don’t you just stop thinking about how the Internet makes you lazier and start using it effectively.

Personally, I use the Internet when I first open my eyes in the morning until I close my eyes at night. I play games, I chat with my friends and of course I use the Internet for studying. When my stuff in class is too hard to digest immediately, I can ask for help on the Internet. I find a lot of information that solve the problem in 15 minutes, instead of 2 hours. Even the most successful people in the world such as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs still find the Internet useful for their lives.

Generally, the answer is still “It depends”: The Internet might dumb you down and make your lazier or the Internet might expand your knowledge and horizon. The problem is how you are using it.

David Phan

Is the internet a trustworthy source of information? Is it as reliable as print?

In most cases, I feel that the internet is a less reliable source of information than print, but it really depends on where you're getting the information from. For example, most books have to go through numerous stages of editing and fact checking before it can get published. The same would go for articles on the internet which are supposed to be reliable, such as information from academic journals, or information from similar organizations on the internet. This way, the internet has a way to verify information similar to the way they have to do it when they're editing and publishing books. 

However, if you simply google a question and go to sites such as Wikipedia or Yahoo, neither of those sites can be verified accurately, the answer you get would just be the most common one, and it may not always be right. Also, there are many sites which may give out the wrong answers, and if they are not edited by other people, there's a likelier chance that the information you read on the internet could be biased.  For example, when I was trying to convince my brother that being a vegan would not affect your health in a negative way, I found articles that were written by fellow vegans, animal activists, and people from organizations such as Peta, which were completely for the subject. However my brother found articles made by dairy industries, food suppliers, and other people commenting on dietary needs. These two sets of article were completely contradicting each other and we didn't really know which one of them would be the most reliable. In contrast, information from print has to be checked by other people to get published, which would give the articles more than one view, and, unless the person/people checking the article has the same purpose, it is less likely the information would be biased based on the writer's outlook. Therefore, Information which is in print is generally more reliable, however information in the internet can also be just as reliable if the source you are getting the information from is reliable and verified. 

Is the Internet dumbing us down and making us lazier? Or is it empowering the masses by giving access to more information?

  The Internet is dumbing us down and making us lazier, we will not be able to live without Internet anymore. Way back from now, if the Internet were not commonly used by people, the world would be more complicated than you thought: you wouldn’t have those online medias and you couldn’t get every news in time, sometimes you even need to wait maybe couple months to know that; you wouldn’t have social medias such as, facebook, intagram, snapchat,etc. You can't 'like' others'pictures or 'share', you can't receive any funny pictures from your friends 7/24; No buzzfeeds, which means you are not able to check them just for making blueberry muffins… All those things you are used to use on the internet would disappear. I believe even if those internet things I just mentioned disappeared, some people would not be comfortable anymore. In recent years, people have more and more requests with functions of the Internet, as a result, things which needed to be finished by people themselves are now able to be finished by using Internet, and people are becoming lazier and lazier. For example, people are now commonly using online shopping, they are not necessarily going to a mall or a superstore anymore, because only with one click ,they could get mostly everything they need such as daily supplies, cosmetic items, clothes, bags, shoes and so on, and they could do online shopping whenever they want, shopping is now not limited by external factors such as weather, distance anymore. People basically don’t have to go outside anymore, if they only want to go shopping. Moreover, with the rapid development of Internet industry, more services such like online banking/financial services are available. So now If I ask you, If one day the internet disappears, will our lives be the same? I believe the answer is absolutely a no.

Print? Or Internet as a Source?

When comparing the reliability of internet and print, it would really depend on where and what you are looking at, but I think it is safe to say that the print is generally more reliable. Prints are, first of all, usually written by qualified authors. Then they go through the process of revising and editing by professionals before they are printed onto papers, whereas anyone can, for example, make a blog and write their opinions to be available to the public anonymously. To be officially accessible to the mass, print has to be approved, and the internet does not. The reviewing of several different others makes the book freer of biases, errors, and such. These do give the internet the easy accessibility, anonymity and an opportunity for everyone to express, however, when it comes to the trustworthiness of the source, they might come to us as disadvantages. Nevertheless, the internet has the benefit of the easy and fast updates, whereas it might take a print a while for it to be revised to be published again. Though, the updates are not checked and therefore the reliability may not be there for the internet. The print takes longer for it to be accessible, but the cost of time is for its trustworthiness. In conclusion, the print seems to be more reliable as the internet comes with many benefits but benefits that do not contribute to its reliability.