Should the internet be free? A basic human right? [Study]

Should the internet be free? This is a topic that brings many discussions and in this day and age, the internet has become a staple in everyday life.

It is hard to go anywhere without seeing someone on their phone or laptop, connected to the internet.

Because of how useful the internet has become, the question of whether it should be free has been brought up.

Although the internet has many benefits, there are also some downsides to it being free.

This article will explore both the pros and cons of having free internet, take you through a study that was done about this back in 2019 by the University of Birmingham and share our conclusions with you.

Now with all of your attention let’s talk about the pros of having free internet.

The pros of free internet

The benefits of having free internet speak for themselves but we will list a few scenarios that you may not think you will ever be in where having free internet would be convenient and may save your life.

Emergency Reasons

You are facing a situation where you are lost somewhere and do not know where to go.
You have no phone credits to call for help and you feel stuck.

To make things even worse, your life may be endangered if help doesn’t come soon because you have been bitten by a venomous snake.

Wouldn’t it feel amazing knowing that you can just take your phone and contact someone and in no time help is on its way?

Online Study

Unfortunately, not everyone is in a favorable position to afford an internet connection and these people can’t rape from the benefits that the internet can bring them when studying or following tutorials and learning new skills.

This unfortunate situation keeps them from developing and having a good career.

Digital Culture

In this evolving world, we see that people are likely to do things digitally in all areas.

Make an appointment with your doctor digitally, pay online, work from home, order food, and many more.

These things could make a smarter and more efficient population and increase job opportunities, however, they all require having an internet connection.

The cons of free internet

Having free internet can have great benefits but we should also be aware of its downside and in this section, we will talk about the downsides that come with free internet.

Cyber Criminality

The biggest downside to having free internet is that it increases the chances of cyber criminality.

Free internet is most of the time not secured and opens the door to hackers to intercept the data that you pass through the network and use it of their free will to say it as nice as possible.

It also increases the chances of spam, viruses, malware, and ransomware that can infect your devices and shred them to pieces.

Costs

An Internet connection that is free to you is paid for by someone else.
From a logical point of view, we know that it’s expensive to create and maintain a network that is secure enough to freely use for everything needed.

These expenses increase with every user connected to the network.

To make it publicly available to everyone the government will have to use our tax money to pay for these expenses and that could result in a tax increase.

A study that was done in 2019 by the University of Birmingham

According to a study done in Birmingham in 2019 by Dr. Merten Reglitz, having an internet connection should be a basic human right just like medical care is a basic human right, and states should make it possible to have unmonitored and uncensored access to the internet for those we can’t afford.

This is a goal that is possible to achieve according to Dr. Merten Reglitz who mentioned that this is already done by the Indian state of Kerala and by the European Union.

The basis for his conclusion in this study is that he believes that having no access to the internet limits the freedom of speech because most political discussion is done online and therefore people who do not have access to the internet can’t speak their minds about certain decisions that will be made for them and that they have to live by.

The internet has brought a change for groups of people that impacted the world and got attention on certain topics.

The “Me too” campaign is a great example of this because women who were sexually harassed by powerful men got a voice and could speak up to seek help.

Another example of this is that police violence against afro American men could be documented and brought to the attention of the masses to bring change.

He admits that just having access to free internet will not automatically mean that your voice will be heard and that change will come, but believes in people getting an equal chance to do so.

He believes that you should have an equal opportunity to speak your mind and be able to influence world players to bring meaningful change into your life and not having access limits you to achieve that. 

Read the full article here:
Free Internet access should be a basic human right: Study — ScienceDaily

The conclusion

Having access to the internet can be a great benefit to your life because it gives you the chance to develop yourselves.

It also makes it possible for you to vent your opinion on certain topics and influence world players to bring meaningful change into your life.

It opens lots of opportunities for you and brings you the ease of doing things.

However, it can also bring destruction when we think about cyber criminality and can introduce different costs to the government, which will require more tax because these are expenses that they will have to pay.

According to a study done by Dr. Merten Reglitz in Birmingham, internet access should be a basic human right because it opens a world for people to have a voice that may change their lives, and this goal is very much possible to achieve.