What’s your last google search about? You probably won’t remember it because you do it often. If you want to know about a movie or notes for your exam or anything, The INTERNET is the solution!! We do online searches about everything. Well, it’s helpful in many ways. Review of a product or study material, everything is at our fingertips. So, it helps a lot. But still, it also has adverse effects. Like some people do their medical treatment according to the online information, whoa… That’s something that is not good and safe. We need to consult a doctor to know about our health condition. Even though online information is helpful in studies, it also makes students study less as they can do everything they want with a click whenever they want. Like these, there are many adverse effects. Let’s see the Top 10 Negative Effects of Online Information Search:
1. Medical Treatment
Even regarding their health, most people make decisions based on search results. It’s not a joke. It’s your HEALTH. So, when you have any abnormal symptoms, or you don’t know what it is, consult a doctor. Don’t decide based on the medical records online. Because some may be right, but some are NOT. Your health is not something you can take a chance at.
2. Overload Confusion
When you’re going to buy a product, what do you do? Probably research about that product, right? But with the increase in technology, we have so much information online. This information overload confuses us a lot, as there are different types of information, they’re not only in buying new products but also in tourism, food labeling, telecommunication, etc. This confusion creates many consequences among consumers.
3. Regret
Once you do things according to the reviews, you will end up in regret because nothing can tell you about something except your own experience. The positive reviews might be by their business people, and the negative ones might be the enemy of their business, whatever. Please don’t fall for any of it. Experience things on your own because you’re your best judge. Otherwise, all you have will be regret.
4. Affects Students’ Learning Ability
Students become lazy because of this search engine. Yes, I agree E-Learning helped students a lot. But online education is slowly reducing students’ enthusiasm to learn new things. As everything is available online, they don’t mind searching for it anywhere. Even don’t bother to study it. Thus, their ability to learn is decreasing. Even misuse it by malpractice in exams with it. So, online information is bringing the most down rather than up.
5. Time-Consuming
You want to go to a good and tasty restaurant. So, you used a search engine to find that appropriate restaurant. As I already told you, there is so much information online, overloads of information. When you start to search for something, and you can’t find the correct one, you keep on searching. Then, you see the time; it’s been two hours!! You don’t how this absorbs your time so much. Before you even realized it, time flew fast. That’s how online information search is time-consuming.
6. Decision Making
Online information search plays an important role in influencing our decision to buy a product, any product. You might want to try something – a new product, but you collect information about that product online to make sure you didn’t bought something useless. After reading many articles and reviews, you don’t know what to select. You become confused and do something to end that frustration. It creates uncertainty. This online search influenced our decision a lot.
7. Cognitive Effort
While doing an online information search, your way of understanding and thinking is affected. While searching for information, you must go through many websites and many links within websites. It will affect your cognitive function. It made us lazy even to stand up, as everything comes at our fingertips. Thus, it affects our physical form of seeking Information. By affecting our cognitive function, it reduces the amount of information we can get.
8. Unnecessary Ads
Well, we are using mobile phones or laptops all day. As it’s the internet we are talking about, it has many unnecessary side effects. If you’re searching for a product online suddenly, you see a pop-up about adult content. If you have enough knowledge about it, you can ignore it. But what about children? How will they react if they see it? It will harm their mind and behavior. So, it’s necessary to make them stay from it.
9. Privacy Issues
Online information search has many adverse effects, as we have seen above. One of the deadliest is privacy issues. While you’re searching for something online, you think your search history is safe. You believe your privacy is secure. But it’s not true. You might have noticed pop-ups showing ‘this website uses cookies’ or ‘accept cookies to continue’. It means it can access whatever you see on its website and other websites. Some sites even use location tracking in that. Do you still think it’s safe?
10. Eye Problems
Well, when you’re searching for information from other sources, it also strains your eyes a lot. But when it comes to online. You see everything in front of a screen that releases blue rays. These affect our eyes, making it difficult to see things in the distance. While doing online information searches, we focused on the screen and even spent hours finding appropriate information. This causes eye problems, headaches, and many other problems.
