How the Internet Affects Our Society Nearly 70 million American adults access the Internet regularly. They use it to conduct business, communicate and simply pass the time. The Internet provides information that is sent and received at the speed of light. It helps overcome time, distance and cultural barriers, but this is only part of the paradox that, even though the Internet can expand the world we live in, we still have to virtually isolate ourselves to access it. (Greenfield) It might seem like a great invention and it could connect us almost everywhere in the world, but at what cost? Greater use of the Internet would mean that we would, to a certain extent, give up communication with living beings and other technologies. This excessive use of the Internet can lead to a decline in work performance, use of other media, and face-to-face interactions. During my freshman year of college I lived in an off-campus dorm. We had a computer room in the building next door, and my roommate and I also had a computer in our room, but it wasn't connected to the Internet. Even when I simply had to write a paper, I went to the lab, thinking that if I got bored of the paper, I could just "surf" the web for a while. One night, that brief moment of "surfing" turned into 5 hours in a chat room. When I realized how long I had been there, I got scared. I found that I had spent more time in that computer lab than in the outside world. My only friend was my roommate and she was almost never home. I didn't have a job at the time, so I couldn't meet people that way, and I was very sick at home, so I thought my only release was through the computer because I got bored watching television. I locked myself in the secluded laboratory, where I was alone most of the time. Sometimes, I didn't talk to a living human being for more than 2 or 3 hours a day, and most of those hours were spent talking to my friends and family in Houston. I became a very lonely person and for a while I even felt like I didn't care if I ever talked to people again.