UNITED STATES—The Internet is something that amazes me each day that I think about it. Rewind nearly 25 years ago, and the internet wasn’t even in existence. Now, it’s something that the average American is unable to live without. The scary question is: why? I will admit, I first got a taste of the Internet in the late 90s, it didn’t explode for me until I reached my freshman year in college, where a computer was a must and it was something that everyone had.

The World Wide Web was this massive tool that had a boatload of information available to a person’s taking. The problem with the internet isn’t that it doesn’t provide a multitude of information ’cause it does, it’s the amount of time that Americans spend on the computer in a given day.

I mean, at first, a computer was the only way to access the web; but nowadays with the ever growing involvement of technology, cell phones and other mobile devices are internet compatible. If you have a phone you’re likely using it to surf the web or gather some form of information. Be apart of my study: how many hours on average do you spend on the web each day? How many of those hours are directly correlated to work?  How much of the day has flown by without you even realizing it?

You’ve probably given answers to all those questions, some shocking you, to say the least. That’s the concern with the Internet: it’s consuming our lives. We are so immersed with this digital craze of media: being seen or being heard, we forget about everything else that matters.  How in the world are we allowing these things to transpire, to take place? We have allowed it to become apart of our daily lives. I must admit I take maybe 10-15 minutes each day, to get my daily dose of the Internet looking for buzz worthy news content. It might not sound like a lot of time, but I’ve trained myself to do this daily; that’s scary!

Once something becomes routine for Americans, it’s nearly impossible to halt that routine without seeing hiccups along the way. Imagine going a day, a week or a month without any access to the Internet; would you do it? Most people probably not, but what if I said if you withdrew from the internet for one month I’d fork over $100,000, what about now?  Perhaps, some people would take the bait, but I guarantee most people would slip off the wagon in a matter of a few days. Why? That need, that thirst to know what’s transpiring in the online world, when in reality, nothing is transpiring to begin with.

It would be neat if computers had a device to track how much time we spend surfing the net in a given week. Given those results it might force many of us to question the possibility of putting those keyboards, phones and devices down for a little bit to focus on things of other importance. Life is literally zooming past us, but we’re so engulfed in a world that has been created for us, we fail to see anything besides what we want to see.

We have to grapple with the concept, that before the internet came to existence we still obtained all the news content and educational material from television, movies, magazines and books. Guess what: none of those things have disappeared. They are still out there waiting for us to grab hold of.

By Trevor Roberts