The 10 most unexpected consequences of being online

It seems as though the internet has slowly but surely taken over our lives without us even realising it. There are many consequences for being online and these are a mixture of good and bad things. I decided to put together a list of the ones that come to mind first...

1.    We are now able to communicate with people that are not within our usual communication circles.

2.    This leads to the next point which is that we are able to meet and talk to people within our own environments of interest i.e. leaders in the field one has studied in and therefore we are able to grow our knowledge base.

3.    Creating an online profile without even realising it. Just having Facebook, a blog, Twitter or any other type of social media platform, immediately makes you a person of interest on the internet (type in your own name on Google and see how many pages your it takes up – I’ve only just managed to complete the first page, I guess that’s not too bad considering not too long ago I didn’t exist on Google).

4.    You become lazier, in retrospect, as many companies now days use social media tools such as Skype to contact one another.

5.    Plans don’t need to be steadfast anymore as one can change them within seconds and can expect whoever they are meeting to have read the changes via their choice of social media.

6.    Here’s an interesting one; you can now be unknowingly stalked using Facebook and a number of other social media platforms and of course this also means that you can stalk whoever you please without them knowing you have done so...

7.    Businesses are now able to run background checks on their prospective clients and employees before they have even met.

8.    Have a long lost friend you want to contact; well before social media...the phone book was your best friend. Now, you can type in their name in FB and BAM a list of possible names and pictures come up.

9.    Arguing with complete strangers is all the rage when it comes to Twitter and trust me its FUN!

10. Lastly let’s not forgot all that SPAM ADVERTSING that we see on a daily basis and without knowing it we take the information in.

So the internet is changing and it’s doing it at one hell of a speed. That leaves you with the decision whether to turn that into a positive or a negative.