yulya158

08.12.2021 16:57 •  Английский язык

It's a widely-held view that young people spend too much time on computers. Instead of going out and doing something worthwhile like playing a sport or doing a hobby, it seems
that a lot of young people are wasting their time playing computer games or using social
networking sites. Is this criticism fair? Not entirely! What many people don't realise is just
how many creative things you can do with a computer.
Take photography, for instance. In the past, if you wanted to do photography as a hobby, you
needed a lot of expensive equipment, a dark room to develop photographs and specialist
knowledge. 1
Alan Sakenov got a digital camera for his birthday. He tells us what he has
discovered. I've got the Photoshop program on my computer and use it to create lots of
different effects on the photos I upload,' he says. 'It's brilliant because once you learn how to
use the program you don't need any other equipment at all.
Musicians can also do a lot with computers, too. 2 But she says it was only recently that
she realised just what she could do with music programs on her computer. "Now I can record
my songs onto the computer and work on them there,' she told us. 3 'I don't even need
other musicians or instruments as I can add the drums part straight from the program,
Aruzhan points out. Once she has finished working on her songs, Aruzhan records them on
CD and gives them to her friends and family.
Aruzhan's friend, Dauren Karimov, designs the artwork for her CD covers. He uses his
computer to create it. When I had designed a cover Aruzhan liked, all I had to do was print
it out,' he says. Apart from designing posters for friends, he also likes making comics and
cartoons. 4 Dauren uploads his artwork onto his Facebook page so that he can share it
with all his friends.
Even people who have more conventional hobbies can find computers useful. A lot of young
people like to blog about their hobby because it's a good way of keeping in touch with other
people who have the same interests. Sholpan Sadykova enjoys going to the cinema and she
has been blogging about the films she sees for about a year now. 5
'At first, not many
people read my blog but now people from all over the world get in touch with me on the
blog. 6 I've learned a lot about films from other countries that I might not have heard of
otherwise,' she says.
Whatever your interests, it looks like computers and the internet can have a creative role
to play!