Pakistan Review News and Reviews

Spread of Internet in Pakistan – Is it a sign of Development?

This is an era of information technology. Pakistan is also trying to cope with this IT revolution. In this regards special steps are being taken and efforts are being made to spread internet all over the country.

According to a recent statement of our science & IT minister that now internet is available in about 800 cities of Pakistani compared with India who have internet facility in just 600 cities. This is considered as a great achievement and it is. But here is a question that availability of internet all over the country at low rates guaranteed development? Do our people know the use of internet for development purpose? It is a fact that the ratio of informative and educational sites in the total is very low.

In Pakistan when people get access to internet what many of them do? They use it mostly for entertainment. Many of students spent lot of time and money in surfing on internet. They do Chatting or visit other entertainment sites. Students do use internet for education purpose. But their ratio is very low. To have a rough idea of surfing internet by our new generation, just read “Net Beetian” on Jang Sunday Magazine. It is surprising to read that boys and girls go to internet cafes and spend many hours daily in just chatting. And the out come of spending time and money is just one “Net Beeti”. No other benefit except impulse pleasure. Just join any Pakistani chat room at any site, you will know that what is the level of language and which type of language codes mostly our people use in chatting. Of course not all but there are many who do so. The number of “cyber addicted” people in our country is increasing day by day.

If there is only chatting even then it is acceptable but it is also a fact that many of people including teenagers and youngsters visit pornographic sites. One can imagine that they are morally becoming worst. Their mentality is destroying and they are becoming addicted of such things which are obviously very harmful for them. They are taking all the disadvantages from internet and its advantages are minimized.

Students do use internet for education purpose. But in that also there are several disadvantages. Students normally surf more on internet then teachers. It happens several times that a teacher give some work to student and he get it from internet, copy it and present to the teacher, who many times unable to know that the matter is copied from internet. In this way students are giving up habit of reading book. They just open sites get the information copy paste it and make the assignment. Many times they do not even bother to read it. However a very good advantage of internet for students is for those who want to seek knowledge, can get access to data very quickly and can books of many foreign authors which are very expensive to buy.

Internet it self is a very useful and important tool of development now days but it is really sad that in Pakistan people are mostly misusing it. Those who use it for development purpose are still very few. There is need to develop sense in people. The availability of internet to every one is not big achievement. The achievement would be the positive use of it.

Syeda Afsheen

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