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• The internet's social power

This week ccnet.com posted an article about online activity encouraging family communication; or at least not hindering it.

A survey cited in the article says that “more than 50 percent of Internet users who live with a spouse and at least one child go online with another person at least a few times a week.” The article compares this new technology medium’s ability to spark conversation against television. Most adults consider their families today “to be as close, or closer than the family they grew up in as children thanks to the internet.”

While a night at home may have had a family sitting around the glow of a television screen and ended when the show did, that same night at home can now consist of sitting behind a laptop and sharing youtube videos, blog posts, news articles, jokes, and pictures.

See? The internet can be good for you. The aim of the article was to shatter the notion of the computer user as sequestered and anti-social. Yet, think of all the times a parent has called you over to watch a quirky internet video, every time you’ve brought up an article you read about online and every facebook picture your roommate has shown you, and it is easy to appreciate the social power of the internet.