Slashdot Article Comment

As soon as I read the title, Internet Curfew for College Students? ,I knew I wanted to comment on that. Just the title is ridiculous. The article talks about a prestigious Indian engineering school, IIT Bombay, which decided to block students living in the dorm from Internet access at night. They said that the Internet is hurting their "academic performance, personality development, and extra curricular activities." They feel that if students do not have access to the Internet at night they can use that time to study, socialize in person with others, and join in on extra curricular activities. Also the real reason may be that the Internet is being used by students more for gaming and talking online and not for research like it is intended to be used for.

I just cannot believe this. An Internet curfew for students is just silly to me. I could not imagine if the Internet was disconnected at night. I do not think this is right. For one thing I sometimes do things last minute because I have a busy schedule. If I had to research something online to write a paper or something that was due the next day I would hate it if I had to finish it by a certain time at night. I would feel too pressured by the time limit and would be nervous that my Internet would turn off as I am in the middle of my paper. Also many people do use the Internet to socialize and talk to people through instant messenger. Sometimes conversations go so well that they continue late and night and it would be a shame if the Internet shut down in the middle of it. Another thing is that the Internet makes it possible for people around the world to connect and communicate. There are different time zones everywhere and what if a student's family members lived somewhere where talking online at 2am was convenient for them. That is not fair and you could say they could call them but the Internet is way cheaper than telephone calls. Additionally if they want students to interact in person and not at their computers why not disconnect their phone usage. That is still not in person and you could spend all night talking on the phone, so why not disconnect that too?

I could go on forever with more reasons why this is ridiculous. If you have technology available you should not limit its use. These students are smart which is proven by the fact that they have gone through an extremely competitive process in order to attend this school. They are also smart enough to budget their time wisely. They probably are doing so much work during the day that they deserve to have some fun at night. Cutting off the Internet to them does not seem like a fair or reasonable solution at all to me. Finally, during the day the students will probably play games and talk online instead of doing work because they were not able to do this at night. This may be because when things are taken away from people they tend to go overboard with them when they get a hold of them again, kind of like the same effect prohibition had on people. So overall I think this is a horrible idea!