I’m sure that most people will agree that having the Internet is a wonderful thing for the most part. We can find interesting articles, interact with people, send away for free samples, file our taxes, even find true love online. There are also some bad things about seeking out information over the Internet as well.
Some of the negative things are the fact that people can pretend to be anything and anyone they want. This doesn’t bode well for those trying to date since you may think you’re talking to someone who looks like Johnny Depp and the person ends up really looking like Chris Farley with the personality of a WWF wrestler.
There are also many scams circulating at any time, so we must be careful with the personal information we type into websites. We should be sure the website is trusted, and a good way to do this is to install the free McAfee Site Advisor. This has helped to keep my whole family from downloading anything from potentially dangerous sites or giving personal information to a phishing site.
Everyone also knows how much pornography and hate is out there, so we obviously stay clear of these sites and try to protect our children from them as well. But there are many innocent and helpful website that can cause us mental and emotional angst if we get carried away with their information. I learned this lesson well when it comes to health related issues. I’ve always been a bit of a hypochondriac so every time I get a new pain or odd sensation I tend to look it up online. For those of you who are reading this I’m sure you can imagine that hypochondria and unlimited medical information aren’t a good combination.
Truthfully, I have to laugh at myself now, but there was a time when I thought I had everything from hepatitis to cancer. In fact, I believed I had diseases not yet named by the medical community. Can we say neurotic? I really needed to get offline and get some rest rather than fill my mind with every malady known to mankind.
What I decided to do is take a look at my life and take action where I could since I figured if I was worried about my health so badly it was probably because I wasn’t paying attention to my health. I started exercising at least four times a week, eating healthier foods, and staying away from medical websites unless doing research for an article.
The Internet is definitely an amazing thing to have in our lives, and we can find a lot of helpful information. In fact, this is how I found out about natural remedies for migraines and using glucosamine for arthritis in dogs, but we need to proceed with caution. If not, we could end up destroying our computers, our credit, and our peace of mind.