Good, bad side of internet
An in-depth series (1st of 3 parts)
THERE can be no modern age to speak of if not for the internet, it’s a fact. As people take strides into the future, however, one can only predict what the web has in store for us, but to gauge its truest potential, the good and the bad combined, is just beyond one’s imagination.
Ren (true name withheld) learned from peers about the chatting websites over the internet. Curious as he was, he later jumped in where he met new friends through the internet, not to mention his short-lived romances.
“I was curious about the feeling of chatting with someone online and so I wanted to try it,” he said.
Ren has been an active user of various chatting services since he first logged in back in 2012. He shared that what appealed to him the most about chatting was how friendly some of the online community members have been to him and how interested they are to know him more.
“They are interested with everything you say even if it does not make sense and they even try to come up with topics so that you would keep on talking with them,” he said.
More often than not, what used to be chat mates would end up getting into online relationships, and most of these were short-lived, from one week to a month. Ren admitted having been in an open relationship with both males and females, aged from 16-30 years old and were mostly foreigners.
“We would talk over Skype about almost anything not minding whether the conversation is getting boring,” Ren said.
He said he keeps his identity private, but at a certain point had given his address to one of his online buddies. Much to his surprise, he found out that his chat buddy also lives within his hometown of Cebu.
“He said that he would come here in the Philippines three to four years from now so I estimated that I would have finished schooling by then but he lied to me, he was just already in Cebu near my place. I was really scared, hadlok jud ko, maayo wala ko niya nakit-an,” he said.
Ren has been away from online chatting for four months now to allow himself more time for schooling.
TEENERS’ BEHAVIOUR CHANGING
For some, easier access to the internet did more harm than good.
In a study conducted on Young Adults Fertility and Sexuality (Yafs), the Population Commission (Popcom) 11 revealed that one in three youth have read pornographic materials (46.7 percent among males and 25.9 percent among females). The proportion of youth who have read pornographic materials has declined slightly from 37 percent in 2002 to 35.6 percent in 2013.
The study found that more than half of the youth have already watched movies with sexual explicit content, 79.1 percent of them were males and 40.4 percent were females. The proportion of youth who have watched these movies and videos has increased from 54 percent in 2002 to 58.4 percent in 2013.
The study showed that 14.5 percent of the young respondents admitted visiting websites with pornographic contents; one in five sent or received sex videos through cellphones or internet; 8 in 100 have engaged in phone sex; 4 in 100 had sex with someone they met online or through text messages; 1 in 100 has recorded himself/herself having sex. INTERNET ISN’T ALL BAD Others, however, use internet, or in this case the information communications technology (ICT), to their advantage where they can grow and earn a decent living either by being a part of an established company or as an online home-based worker.
Among them are Dick John Olmoguez and Jessie Lorion who have enjoyed working and receiving better compensation for years already.
Olmoguez, a technical support expert of Synnex-Concentrix Corporation, said he is lucky enough to land a job in a stable company which offers him higher salary and better benefits. This allows him to spend for his basic needs and help his family as well out of his labor.
He said Synnex-Concentrix, one of the biggest contact centers in the city, also gives value to their employees by providing them with good health benefits, which are very substantial for the contact center agents considering the nature of the job they have.
Olmoguez cited the importance of changing the mind-set of those aspiring agents of a call center firm. He underscores a stalwart personality as much needed requirement to stay longer in the work.
“It’s a wrong mind-set that when you work in a call center, it’s stressful. It’s only you who makes it stressful,” he said.
Lorion is one out of many home-based workers, working on a non-voice side, which includes software development, mobile application, website development, animation, and medical transcription. Three of his online jobs are website developing, video making, and photo editing.
With thousands or even millions of websites online, he will never run out of projects. By working online, Lorion gets the chance to work for several American employers.
Lorion added that online job gives him the luxury of time to do other chores as he is not bound to working at a certain time of the day.