Edexcel IGCSE ICT · Revision Guide
Impact of the Internet
on Individuals
🎯 Big Idea: The internet has completely changed how people work, learn, socialise, and access information — and every one of those changes brings both real benefits and real risks that examiners want you to weigh up.
Chapter Summary
The whole chapter in one scroll — read this first, then dive into the detail below.
- Employment — the internet changes what skills employers want, creates brand-new job roles (cyber security, data science, AI/ML, digital marketing, cloud computing), and can cause job losses for people who don't retrain.
- Working practices — the internet enables collaborative working (real-time teamwork from anywhere) and flexible working (choosing your own hours/location), each with clear advantages and disadvantages.
- Access to information — compared to TV/radio, the internet offers 24/7, unlimited-channel, less-edited, borderless access to news, plus new ways of learning like VLEs, social learning, gamification and VR.
- Entertainment & leisure — on-demand streaming (movies, TV, music) and online systems for travel, shopping and banking are now the norm.
- Social impacts — the internet reshapes social interaction (gaming, video, messaging, networking) with real for/against trade-offs, and enables cyberbullying, which spreads fast and wide.
- Reduced physical activity — because everything can be done online, people move less, which harms both physical health and mental wellbeing.
- Working from home — cheaper, more powerful digital devices have shifted work from a centralised office model to a decentralised home-working model, with distinct benefits/drawbacks for organisations and for employees.
1. Impact on Employment
Three big effects: changing skills, new jobs, and job losses.
Why does the internet change what employers want?
Think about it this way: fifty years ago, a "good employee" mostly needed to be reliable and know their trade by hand. Today, almost every job — from a plumber booking jobs via an app to a marketing exec running ad campaigns — touches the internet somehow. That single fact ripples out into three consequences examiners love to test:
Change in skills requirements
Employers now expect:
- Tech/ICT competence — basic digital literacy is no longer optional.
- The ability to work with and analyse data to make informed business decisions (data is everywhere now, so someone has to make sense of it).
- Adaptability, because automation keeps shifting which skills are needed.
- Problem-solving and critical thinking — the routine, repetitive tasks are increasingly handled by machines, so humans are valued for the thinking machines can't (yet) do.
- Soft skills: effective communication, collaboration, and lifelong learning.
💡
Analogy
Imagine a factory that used to need 50 people turning bolts by hand. A machine now turns the bolts — but someone still needs to programme, monitor, and fix that machine. The job didn't disappear; it
transformed into something requiring different skills.
New job opportunities
The internet hasn't just changed old jobs — it has created entirely new career paths that didn't exist a generation ago:
| Job | What it involves |
|---|
| Cyber security |
| Data science |
| AI & Machine Learning |
| Digital marketing |
| Cloud computing |