HOW BEST TO USE THE INTERNET AT HOME

The internet is a hugely central part of many people’s lives these days, though it doesn’t have to be, and you always have the option of changing that if you want to. However, insofar as you are using the internet at home, you’ll want to make sure that you are doing so in the right way, so that you can make the most of it. But what does this mean, and how can you ensure that you are doing it as well as possible?

Essentially what we mean here is that you are using the internet consciously, that you are keeping safe while you are using it, and that you are not spending too much time on it overall. These are important things to make sure of, as we are about to see. Let’s take a look at how you might approach these issues. 

Conscious Use 

So first of all, let’s discuss what we mean when we say that you should use the internet consciously. Essentially this is all about ensuring that you are using it in a way which is sensible and thoughtful. This is basically the opposite of mindlessly scrolling through twitter feeds and so on. It’s more about picking it up and putting it down for a specific amount of time and for a specific need. 

What we are arguing for here is to use the internet as a tool. As long as you approach it in that way, you are going to find that it’s much easier and simpler to enjoy it, and not to let it take over your life. If you are not careful, the internet can become something of an addiction, so conscious use is a good way to avoid that happening. As long as you use it consciously, you’ll find that it’s a much more enjoyable thing to use on the whole, so this is really worth thinking about.

Safety

As well as that, it’s vital that you know what to do in order to remain as safe as possible while you are online. This can actually be relatively easy to achieve, but you will need to make sure that you are focused on a few key things, so it’s well worth going through what those are. And if you can do that, again it will have a way of making your internet experience so much better. 

First of all, secure your connection with a strong password, and make sure that you always have a firewall and an antivirus program on. You might also want to install a VPN, so that you can hide what your IP address is - and be aware that it is possible to change your IP address whenever you want to as well. Just look up how to change IP address and you should find it pretty easily. 

Beyond that, you might want to take care to avoid scams and other such problems. The main way this happens is through phishing, where someone pretends to be an organization to steal data from you. Just keep your wits about you, and don’t automatically trust anyone that emails you. This is a good rule of thumb that will probably serve you well. If you can do those basic things, you’ll be a lot safer in no time, and you’ll find that your use of the internet is much more secure - and therefore more enjoyable.

Time Reduction 

Finally, it might also be worth trying to limit how much time you spend online overall, especially if you have a history of ending up scrolling for hours on social media. One of the things that can really help here is what we mentioned about using it consciously as a tool. If you can do that, you’ll find that you are much more likely to actually have a good amount of time there, and not too much.

You might also want to set up a tool to help you. You can get screen reduction tools that automatically shut you out after a while, and they can be really helpful in trying to avoid using screens too much. So that is definitely something to think about here too. However you do it, just try to keep your internet time limited a little, and you will probably find that this makes it much easier to enjoy the time you do spend online. That’s a really important thing for you to consider in all of this.