The Internet has had an overall positive effect on our society.

Okay I'm going to quickly address your points: 1. "Whatever you say", my opponent has conceded to my point about only a limited number having the internet and therefore agrees that on the whole it has pretty much no effect. 2. You have no sources showing that the internet spreads charity further or that it brings attention to them. Burden of proof is on you. 3. I don't see why the ability to buy rare items (that aren't needed) is positive on society. I would like to see a source showing that internet businesses profit more than other types. A market stall costs as little as ï¿½ï¿½122[1] to buy and the rental cost varies. A website can cost little to start up but when they start getting active can cost millions to maintain. 4. Irrelevant whether I use the internet for entertainment. Why does more entertainment have a positive effect on society? Is it actually necessary? Childhood obesity has increased during the same time that the internet became popular[2], now I'm aware that this is a correlation does not equal causation fallacy but it is possible (and I think quite likely) that the abundance of entertainment on the internet and the ability to work at home from the net has meant people are less active. Certainly it has not made them more active. 5. If as you say "because they are, simply, relationships" then what difference does it make whether you find them online or not? "It allows people to create them more easily", I'm not sure where you got that idea. If anything the internet allows you to create virtual relationships with people that you can never meet, perhaps not a negative things but I fail to see how having a cyber relationship is positive for society. 6. "You don't have to read an entire book to learn about a subject" This depends what you define as a subject, in this instance I will refer to it as a 'A course or area of study'. Now obviously learning something limited such as how to butter toast doesn't require a book but that isn't what I call a subject. However areas of study such as Philosophy, Biology, Theology etc. etc. do require an entire book. You say "Most people don't need to access a deep understanding of a topic", I agree and even to the extent that they don't need even a basic understanding. The only essential knowledge that the internet provides are things such as howto guides but most of them are either not necessary to society or common knowledge. "You would be forced to buy expensive textbooks from other parts of the world" You can order books in from a local library (and they don't need the internet to do that). "it would take a long time to find the specific information" Nonsense, if you need short, relevant information you get an encylopedia which only takes a matter of seconds. Nearly all books are well indexed and finding information is never that hard. A lot of esoteric knowledge will take a lot of reading and research on or off the internet, I however find that books are better written and usually more in depth. 5. "I then proceeded, whether you noticed or not, to explain the positive effects, which I believe outweigh the negatives" what you actually said was "Using the Internet, I met a girl who was not only like-minded to me, but who became a very good friend of mine. I (a naturally shy person) have managed to even improve my social skills using another debating site, and on instant messengers which helped me talk to people I couldn't talk to in actual life. I managed to make progress on friendships with these people, even outside of the virtual world. Another study, I might add, (http://www.news.com.au......) shows that young people do still tend to friendships outside of cyberspace." You gave a personal anecdote about how you met a girl online, you can't use personal anecdotes in a debate because you may very well be lying. I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but you did not show why it is superior to meet like-minded people online than in real life. "young people do still tend to friendships outside of cyberspace.", this isn't a positive. Just because people don't become hollow after using the internet doesn't mean it outweighs the decremental effects it has on your social skills. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So far my opponent has only present three real positives of the internet: It is a place to buy rare items (that are most likely useless things like lava lamps), it provides in depth guides to common sense or knowledge and businesses have a new platform to play on. I will now present some negative aspects of the internet: I. Law abiding citizens will turn to crime because the internet provides an anonymous blanket to do so. Illegal downloads of movies, music and software is huge. One article claims 18% (of Australian internet users) download things illegally[3], now 80% of Australians have the internet[4] but only 0.115% are in prison at the moment[5]. Now obviously the number of people in prison isn't representative of how many are criminals but let's even assume that 1% were criminals then then internet is encouraging a massive amount of people to commit crime that wouldn't have before. Now I am aware that many people speed and shoplift and commit other crimes that they wouldn't get prisoned for, but the fact remains that the internet is encouraging people to become criminals because they don't fear being caught. And I am of course assuming that the rest of the internet using world fits a similar pattern to Australia. II. The internet provides illegal pornography and other illegal material including terrorist manuals and places for like-minded people to plan illegal activities without fear of being caught such as http://news.bbc.co.uk..., cannibals meeting online. Not wanting to have my search engine filled with terms regarding child porn I'm just going to assume paedophiles who before may have been afraid of acting on their urges now have a way of finding illegal materials as do many other groups. III. "90% of children have accidentally viewed online pornography, The average age for first exposure to pornography is 11, A third of teenagers say they learn about sex by viewing porn"[6]. This place where you say is the perfect breeding ground for finding loves is also the place where a lot of the internet using youth are also coming across material that can be damaging to their future development and whether you feel this way it does mean children are going against society's beliefs and laws. I'm not naive enough to suggest that these three bad points make the internet a terrible place. However it is clear that for most of the positives of the internet there is also a negative. However many of the positives simply facilitate activities that would continue without the internet and would happen at the same rate. But the negatives have long term damage on social lives, turn people into criminals and provide unsavoury material for those who want it and those who don't. It would be fair to say then that considering most people don't have the internet and that on the whole the internet has something of a neutral effect. [1]http://www.market-stalls.co.uk... [2]http://www.iom.edu... [3]http://www.smarthouse.com.au... [4]http://www.internetworldstats.com... [5]http://www.pariahnt.org... [6] http://sexperienceuk.channel4.com...