Many people send and receive emails in business and in their personal life. Do the advantages of using the email outweigh the disadvantages?

With the boom in the dot-com era, emails have become one of the most effective ways to communicate with people all over the world as conventional mailing systems take a long time to reach the other person. Many people have been using their computers for communicating with their peers and work as the messages can be sent quickly to the other person and has no chance of not reaching others provided they have a good internet connection. The vast majority believe that the advantages of using email outweigh the disadvantages. Whether or not it is held true will be the topic of discussion in the essay. On one hand, emails are helpful to the environment as they reduce the amount of paper being used. For instance, a survey conducted by the National University of Singapore in 2020 has claimed that individuals using emails as their primary mode of communication cut down at least 85% of paper usage in their homes. In addition, not only will online mail not get lost in the mail as they are a digital form, in contrast to physical letters which can get misplaced by the post, but also prevent grammatical errors in messages because of text-correction software. In summary, it is apparent that emails are helpful because they are capable of sending out error-free texts as well as cut down paper usage which is very beneficial to the environment. On the other hand, since electronic mails are sent over the internet it is not as secure a mode of communication as the mail system. Hackers online can easily pry into others email accounts and read the texts they are sending to others and can even modify them. For example, a survey conducted by McAfee a cybersecurity firm in 2018 has stated that more than 57% of people using emails have gotten their accounts hacked because they were using weak passwords. Furthermore, emails receive a lot of spam messages as well which aren’t very useful to the users most likely in the form of advertisements. In short, digital mails aren’t a very secure messaging platform as hackers can hack into it and send texts to contacts as well as read your messaging history. In conclusion, electronic mails can be helpful to the environment and grammar checking software can autocorrect errors in documents that are not possible in handwritten letters. Hence, the benefits of using an email service are far greater than its drawbacks.