An obsession and on the verge of becoming an addiction, the Internet has become a near universal presence in the lives of this generation of young people living in the United States.
But the ubiquity of the web isn’t guaranteed everywhere. The people of Libya regained Internet access Aug. 22 after being disconnected since Feb. 17.
On the morning Internet access was restored, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya tweeted, “Welcome to all of our brothers & sisters from inside Tripoli on Twitter… Internet returns to them first time in a long time! #Feb 17 #that.”
A large part of the social lifestyle of an American college student is constituted by tweets, Facebook status updates and having thousands of online “friends,” many of whom the user has never met in real life.
A study conducted by the Pew Research Center this year found that 50 percent of all adults use social networking sites, a large increase from the five percent that used them in 2005. Another found that 71 percent of Internet-using adults use video-sharing sites.
Yet another study concluded that 35 percent of all American adults now own a smartphone and 25 percent of owners use their phones to access the Internet more than any other device.
“I use the Internet every day for some reason or another,” said secondary education English senior Jessica Allain. “There would be a mass riot or something if LSU did not have combust.”
“I don’t think anyone at LSU doesn’t use the Internet every day for hours on end,” said economics sophomore Nathaniel Givens.
Another Pew survey conducted in April found that 33 percent of the people polled constantly used the Internet to use a search engine and 59 percent had used it the day before taking the survey.
Information Technology Services is the University department devoted to keeping the Internet up and running. IT Communication and Planning Officer Sheri Thompson said she knows faculty, students and University administrators cannot keep things on campus running smoothly, if at all, without it.
“Whether or not we would survive [without Internet] would depend on whether or not this tragedy was limited to the LSU campus,” Thompson said. “It would definitely alter the way we conduct business. If everyone else had connectivity in the world and we were a black hole, then we would not survive since we would no longer be