In today’s world we find that more people are using the internet for despicable and sickening practices. They are using the internet for scams and to cheat people out of their money. They lure young people into situations that endanger their lives. The scam artists have thought of ways to steal your private identity and make you out to be someone you are not. Good people are suffering the consequences of criminals. However, if we look further into the subject, we see that the internet is not all bad. There are advantages to the internet. It has made learning, staying in touch with people, and finding direction in life faster and easier. First of all, the internet has made learning faster and easier by making things more accessible. Before the internet if you wanted to research something, you would have had to go to the library or have a whole set of encyclopedias that were really expensive and took up a lot of space. Now you just type in the topic, the same resources you had with a whole set of encyclopedias are right before your eyes. If you didn’t know how to spell a word, you would have to take out the chunky dictionary and find the letter the word began with, and then look through thousands of words to find the right word. Now finding a word that is misspelled just takes the touch of a key. To find an article that was old, you would have to go through tons of microfilm. Now, you just have to type in the topic or the author, and you are there. In addition to research, keeping in touch with people is much easier through the internet. You no longer have to go to the post office to purchase a stamp, and then write a letter, return to the post office and mail the letter. In addition, you would have to wait two to three days for the letter to get to that person, and several days for the person to respond, and then another two to three days for the letter to be returned. Now you just write the letter and press send. In the past paying bills was prolonged because you had to mail the bill, and you would not know if it had made it there until you got a late notice, the power was cut off, or you got your next bill. Now most companies have it set up so that you can pay online with the touch of a button. You can check to see what the amount is, and whether or not it has been paid. Finding people you have lost contact with is also stress free. Just go to Facebook and type in a name, and usually that person pops up. Before the internet, you would have to write a letter to that person and hope he or she still lived at his or her last known address or maybe contact someone that the both of you knew. You may even have to visit the place you last saw him or her. As a result, you may never find who you were looking for. Finally, the internet has made finding your direction less stressful. Before there was internet, there were maps and atlases. They were big and made from paper. They were often torn, wrote on, or things may