Getting into a heated debate over the earnings of a footballer is no longer necessary; all you have to do is Google search. Yes, that is what people do these days but how many people actually have access to Google?
Not everyone has access to it
Getting into a heated debate over the earnings of a footballer is no longer necessary; all you have to do is Google search. Yes, that is what people do these days but how many people actually have access to Google?
According to the World Internet Stats report of 2015, 313million Africans are internet users out of a total population of 1.16 billion of the continent. To put that into perspective, that is about 27 per cent of the total population. With such a percentage, dependence wouldn’t be the right word to use when there is a huge percentage out there that doesn’t even know what the internet is for.
Education is the foundation of learning anything and we still have more than three quarters of the schools in the world using traditional chalk and blackboard means of teaching where exams are written on paper by pen. These young minds aren’t actually taught to depend on the internet and even when they get access to the internet, there is only a certain level of dependence they can have with it as their foundation is built on many other channels other than the internet.
The common meaning of dependence to a layman is the state of relying or being controlled by someone or something else. What do most people use the internet for today? A little bit of research, reading and watching what is online and mostly chatting and interacting with friends. Does this seem like dependence? I don’t think so; actually we are still underusing the internet as of now.
Different mechanisms have been put in place for people to book appointments; interact with doctors or health workers but how many actually use that? Almost no one does that. Not even myself; I’m always connected to the internet. The best I can do is call the doctor and more frequently go to see him. Whenever someone is very sick, they still have to be flown to India, South Africa for treatment yet there are still claims of being treated over the internet.
A few times, some people try to get solutions to life on the internet and actually get disappointed. A few months ago, a young couple had a son and as he grew, they always referred to the internet on how to raise a son perfectly. After a couple of months, they realised they were using means that some random white parent wrote yet their son is in Africa living in a different environment; they had to switch to parental instinct means of raising a child like they should have at the beginning.
Just because someone spends a lot of time using something doesn’t mean they depend on it. The internet is just a perfect distraction but other than chatting, 90 per cent of activities that people actually do on a daily basis have nothing to do with the internet. Take a look at your to-do list from the moment you wake up and see how much the internet has actually helped you.
patrick.buchana@newtimes.co.rw
If used sensibly, it’s not a problem
I am not going to pretend, I love the internet and I am not ashamed to admit that my life would be very hard without it. If you were to ask me if people are getting too dependent on the internet, I probably would ask you why they shouldn’t.
Nine months ago, I had a baby. It was my first time and if I thought that I depended on the internet, that was the time I confirmed my unbreakable relationship with it and it’s perfectly okay.
You see, I asked Google everything i needed to know in terms of taking care of the baby. I did not know anything, not even how to change a diaper but the internet helped me because it is resourceful about everything. I have followed websites like babycenter.com which literally has every bit of information from conceiving to step by step stages and helpful tips on what to do from when your baby is still a foetus till he/she is a toddler. Doctors all over the world have referred parents to this website making it a very reliable source of helpful information. And that is only about stages of baby/toddler parenting. There are so many other resources about so many other different things that I can’t even start getting into because I will never finish.
I have heard people blame the internet for the poor communication between friends and family. I always laugh at this. Either you are good at communicating or you are not. You sincerely can’t start putting your failure to sit in a car and go visit your mother on something else.
People need to understand that times have changed. Most people lived in close-knit communities and relied on each other for information. But that was 50 years ago. Human beings have become busier and with the race against time, the Internet has become more and more reliable.
What we need is not giving up on the internet, what we need is to perhaps to put it to good use.