The internet has affected our society a lot, especially in these past few years, and like everything that affects society, it has the yin and yang. The meaning for ‘yin and yang,’ is the shadow cannot exist without light, and light cannot exist without the shadow. I personally believe Social media, Youtube, etc., has a lot of both good sides and bad sides.

Youtube (POSITIVES)

Youtube.com is a website (or an app) with multiple genres and sections of videos, such as entertainment, educational, music, gaming, and fashion. Back in the day, if you wanted to do something such as homework or studying, but don’t know exactly how to do the thing you were assigned to do, you would have your parents drive you, or walk all the way to the nearest library and read pages and pages to find what you are looking for. In today’s age, if you don’t know how to do something, you can easily go to a website search engine (Firefox, Bing, Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, etc.) or go on Youtube and get a tutorial on what you are trying to do. It makes it tons easier than having to walk back to your house with stacks of books, trying to figure out how to do 1+1.

Youtube (NEGATIVES)

There are also several negative sides of having Youtube access. As many know, there are millions of videos on Youtube. It’s easy to categorize them all– think of it as an iceberg. We have the ‘top videos,’ that could be categorized as normal things we all watch, including music videos, entertainment, and educational items.

Then there is the ‘middle of the iceberg’ videos. These are Youtube videos that are on the weird side and not necessary ones “normal people” would watch. Most of these are fun and jokes. Some examples are gaming channels or just mindless videos.

Lastly, we come to the bottom of the iceberg. These Youtube videos are considered “terrible,” by many and they are not jokes whatsoever. These videos are dark and include terrible and illegal topics. I will not go into detail but people should bring light to these kinds of things, so it can stop once and for all.

There are a lot of good things about Youtube, especially related to journalism. It makes it easier to watch videos of current news, instead of waking up early to watch the news to get everything. While you go on Youtube, you can get distracted by other videos in your ‘recommended videos’ section and end up with a whole day of watching Youtube.