TL;DR: The constant stream of information available at everyone’s fingertips has its downsides. It is too easy to receive help for a problem that in turn builds a reliance on this type of assistance.

The Internet is an ocean of information that is available at most people’s fingertips. Most people would agree that this is a good thing but it does come with its own set of consequences. One of these consequences is being able to get help too easily in certain situations. Society does not have to figure things out on their own since it is so simple to look up what to do next. This problem is seen in many different positions such as education, video games, and travel.

What would someone do if they were stuck on a homework problem? Most people would open up their web browser and go to Google and search for an answer to the question. If a person is stuck, another person must have had the same problem. This defeats the purpose of homework. An individual is supposed to learn the material. One way that many people learn how to do things is to figure it out themselves. Having so much information available makes it easy to just be shown what to do. People only memorize how to do one specific type of example and ignore what other problems that could arise. Many people memorize information which they forget on the test. One of the main causes of this is the use of too much help for problems during homework because that help is not available for the test. This type of behavior leads to nothing being learned; the task is just complete.

Video games are not meant to be easy. It is a test of skill that exists to challenge each player. Many players are not adept at playing these games. This leads to most games accommodate an easier gameplay for those that are new and a harder gameplay for those that are veterans. However, not all games take part in this practice. One game that does this is Dark Souls. Everyone plays their first time through the game on the same difficulty. This makes it hard for inexperienced players yet fairly simple for those that have played through the game multiple times. In particular, the hardest part is Blighttown. As the name suggests, it is full of a poisonous swamp and there are many enemies that will poison you before you realize where they are. It is also very dark in this area. There are three different types of people when faced with Blighttown. There are those who do not care about the game that much who die over 10 times in the same spot which results in the game never being played again. There are those who try as many times as needed until the area is complete. The third type are those who die a few times, look up a walkthrough, and defeat this part of the game. This avenue doesn’t teach the user how to deal with tough situations. The rest of the game will be much harder since valuable skills were not developed. This was a direct result of the ease of searching the web.

The world is a large place. So large in fact that everyone needs directions to get to a new place. Many people use Google Maps to navigate in unfamiliar areas. This is acceptable for paths that are traversed only a few times a year. However, there are people who use it to go to work and this is unacceptable. No person is that bad at directions where they need the help of navigation software to go through the route that they have traveled for 5 years. People become so reliant on this service that they get lost on their way home because their phone died. They then panic and drive around until they remember something. This shouldn’t happen. Everyone should know what they are around when traveling. They should know the general direction that they have to head in. It is not the job of the software to tell you how to get to your destination; the job of the software is to teach you how to get from point A to point B.

People use software like a crutch. They rely on it to succeed and it defeats the purpose of this type of help. It is not meant to be followed to the letter. It should be used as a guide and not a road map. Someone should use this information to learn the skills needed to succeed in activities such as homework, video games, and travel. Information is the gateway to success yet there are still ways to use this information in a negative way. Everyone will need help with one thing or another but the world needs to think before it falls back on the Internet. It is not the Internet’s job to help someone; it is that person’s job to help themselves.

Dark Souls 3 -03 flickr photo by .Natty.Dread. shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license