Relationship between Advancement in Information Technology and Internet Censorship

The advancement in information technology has been very significant over the past two or three decades and the greatest invention was without any doubt the internet. Looking at the current situation of the world it would not be odd to say that if there would be no internet on the face of earth there would be no life on it either. Moreover internet is something that cannot be bounded or constraint by limits and censoring the content available on it will greatly affect its value worldwide. However, it would be wrong to say that it does not require any content censoring at all, but on the other hand it has to be admitted that it has become the most important medium of human communication, so it has to be free flowing at all costs.

The Internet has turned our lives upside down, it has become the most important aspect of our life and without internet our lives look incomplete, it has become hard for us to imagine even a single day of our daily life without it. One of the most influential personalities of our era Mr. Stephen Hawking once said” We are all now connected by the internet, like neurons in a giant brain”. Moreover the internet has displaced many things in our lives, back in the day where we had to step outside our houses in order to perform numerous daily activities like; banking, shopping, ordering food, watching news, listening music, getting a cab to work and many other are now made just a click away from us all by the internet.

Also, internet is often referred as the 8th wonder of the world because of its rapid growth all these years. Firstly it should not be censored as it can be seen as a hindrance towards freedom because whatever is shared or flashed on the internet is explicitly an individualistic opinion and censoring the internet may upraise a feeling of loss in freedom among the users, as a matter of fact the numbers of internet users in previous twenty years have escalated rapidly and to be precise, globally the numbers of internet users have increased from only 413 million in 2000 to over 3.4 billion in 2016 and counting on (Wikipedia).Secondly internet is always seen as a very broad facility and if it is restricted or confined it may lose its attractiveness in the eyes of its users. The degree of Internet censorship varies on a country-to-country basis. Most of the democratic countries have mediocre censorship on internet content, other countries go as far as they can to limit the access of information such as news and suppress discussion among citizens, the biggest example is North Korea where internet is not available for general public and only some selected high officials are permitted to access the global internet. Internet censorship also occurs in response to or in anticipation of events such as elections, protests, and riots. An example is the increased censorship due to the events of the Arab Spring (Wikipedia). Lastly, censoring restricts the information that people expect to get for different purposes e.g. students and workers making assignments or performing their work would not be able to get the adequate information to perform their tasks timely and this would greatly violate the actual purpose for which internet was built for, In addition to this today’s generation has a habit of extracting facts and figures on different topics and their first choice for the source of information has always been the internet.

Even if there are numerous reasons to support that internet should not be censored, it would be invalid to say that we do not need any kind of censorship at all. Vast advancement of internet has brought some drawbacks and threats along with it for the society. First of many threats is the increase of cybercrime, people do not even have the slightest knowledge about how their personal information is easily extracted through their use of internet. Furthermore the hackers, spammers and stalkers are always keeping tracks of our every single click, they can easily access our photos, videos, posts and other stuff whenever they want and can easily misuse it without our consent. Second threat is the engendering and influencing against different subjects. The internet, especially the social media platform is being misused by people in order provoke people against different communities, groups and the government. Prior to these another very serious issue is the use of internet for terrorist activities, often it can be seen that many different terrorist activities are openly telecasted on the social media and many other sites operating on the internet for example; bloodshed, murders, bombing etc. it is very threatening for the youngsters as they get brainwashed by looking at such unpleasant content, not only telecasting but internet has also become a way of operating these activities as well. Last and the most important issue is the sexual content that is openly shown on social media and other internet sites, due to this the sick and severely mentally disordered are provoked to destroy the existence of womanhood, the number of rapes of minors are increasing day by day in the society, eve teasing has become normal in the society, that is miserable for us and for our upcoming generations, so with all these drawbacks the idea of censoring the content does not seem to be insignificant at all.

However it has to be admitted that internet has become the most important mode for communication in today’s world. Numerous different applications have been introduced that have made communication much uncomplicated; also the people have prioritized these as the main way to interact with each other. Even in the business world the internet has become main way of communicating with costumers all around the world through advertising on the social media and internet websites.

To conclude it all, it has to be agreed that in today’s world without the internet our lives are empty, although it does have a few disadvantages but the reality is that with every year passing by we are getting more and more dependent upon it.