5 Ways to Entertain Yourself While Going Online
In the last decade, the internet became the main source of fun, mostly for millennials. There is an endless stream of possibilities to have some fun on the internet, and in this article, we will cover the most popular ones. Whether it is YouTube, or other multimedia, social networks, video games, or even betting and gambling, nowadays, there aren’t many people who didn’t try it all. However, it might happen that you didn’t hear about some highly entertaining activity you can participate in. Many people, especially the older population, like to go out and entertain themselves offline. For example, some of you might still think that going to the local casino is much better than playing from your home. If that’s the case, you certainly didn’t experience the best online casinos.
Entertainment and News Websites
The most obvious and the most common way to have some fun online is – browsing. The older population, especially baby boomers, if they are on the web, they mostly browse. Entertainment websites and news websites are the most common group online. You can choose from sports, politics, fashion, movie critique and reviews, gossip, literally, whatever you imagine – you can get it.
The younger audience is usually spending time differently – they are not interested in politics, or regular news, they might browse entertainment and teenage gossip sites, but they hang out in different places online. This leads us to the second section of our article – social media.
Social Media
Social Media websites are the places on the web where most people younger than 40 is spending their time online. People in older 20s or 30s are usually hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, while the younger population is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and similar applications. This is completely understandable since Facebook is 16 years old, but everyone opened their account in the late years of the 2000s when it became huge. People who are now on Facebook were mostly teenagers back then, and they didn’t move to other social networks, at least in most of the cases.
However, the younger audience is mostly using smartphones to access the internet, so Instagram is a more obvious choice for them. Also, they are living faster, always on the move, socialize differently than 10 years older people, not to mention their parents, and that generation gap is clearly visible on social networks.
On Twitter, you can find every kind of person, every age, every profile, every motive. Twitter is a network where common people might interact with celebrities, and that was the main reason why it became massive. Nowadays, Twitter is used for publishing your political, social, and other views to a much broader audience.
Video Games
Video games are a phenomenon much older than the internet itself, but they changed and started thriving with the development of the world wide web. Of course, there were popular video games before on consoles, such as Sega and Play Station, and they still exist even today. However, games on the personal computer that can be played online made a huge impact on the gaming industry. Counter-Strike and Warcraft III were played for decades, and in the 2010s MOBA games were the most popular, such as Dota or League of Legends.
Sports games, such as FIFA and PES are also very popular and they attract kids from a very young age, but even 30-year-olds still play video games as of today, because they started when they were going to school.
Sports Betting and Gambling
Sports betting and gambling is also an older phenomenon than the internet. Gambling is probably the same age as the complete human race – traces of that were found on cave paintings, which is mind-blowing. Sports betting is, obviously, much younger than that, because sports weren’t invented until modern civilizations arose. However, it doesn’t mean it is that young – first sports were played during antiquity and sportsmen were extremely popular, similar to nowadays, and well respected. Of course, the sport evolved significantly over the course of the millennium, and modern sports, and sports betting as a consequence, are nothing like they were in the age of antiquity.
It is the same as gambling. We already mentioned that even in prehistoric age you can find some clues about the games similar to dice, which means that our ancestors gambled from the very beginning. However, even saloon games and the first slot machines are not even similar to the things we have today. Modern casinos are glamorous and even decadent. Online casinos are different – easily accessible, you can play casino games from the comfort of your home and you don’t need to feel social stigma which is still going strong in some parts of the world, especially if you are a younger male, and especially female.
YouTube and Other Streaming Platforms
Last, but not least, online you can enjoy watching short video clips on YouTube (or you can even take part in creating videos yourself!) or full-time series and movies on Netflix and other streaming services. Netflix is very popular among the younger audience and here we can also see that generation gap we mentioned before. YouTube is watched by everyone and it really depends on which type of videos you want to open. Their algorithm spots user behavior and recommends similar videos to the same user, which corresponds with the age and interests of that person but also shows us global trends. People are able to watch a whole season of some Netflix series at one go, which is probably the most interesting trends we see nowadays with youngsters.
Summary
The internet is the biggest playground and the source of fun in the modern world of today. However, it can be a devil’s playground as well, so parents must be careful and control what their kid is doing online. From minors to elders, from rich to poor, from men to women, everyone can find something for themselves online, and if we look at the trends, it is definite that our whole life will be connected online maybe sooner than we think. If that happens, everyone should be friends with nerds, because they will rule the world.
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