Believe it or not, somewhere between the spam, social media, Netflix, and funny cat videos, you can find essays on the web. The difference between an essay and web content, however, is that web content includes a lot more than just the written word.
While there are several different types of essays, a traditional essay includes an introductory paragraph, a thesis statement that presents a topic the writer intends to analyze in the essay, body paragraphs with topic sentences that support the writer's thesis, and a concluding paragraph that sums up the writer's arguments.
While essays may use graphics, data tables, or illustrations to support their statements, the only required element for a good essay is words that are well-written and well-structured to make a logical point.
Web content is literally everything you see on the internet. The photo you shared of your dinner four years ago on Facebook is now web content. Novels written hundreds of years ago are now web content. The videos of your last birthday party, the playlist you put together after your last breakup, and every single one of your emails are all web content.
There's an easy way to find out if an essay is based on legitimate arguments. With web content, that's not always true.
An essay that bases its thesis on facts and backs them up with reliable sources will include a bibliography page at the end of the essay. A list of sources and information on how to view those sources yourself should be provided in any well-researched essay.
Web content, including blogs, news articles, photos, and even videos can be misleading, doctored, and unsourced. Knowing whether or not to trust what you're reading on the internet can take some real work. Some web content has been manipulated or is based purely on opinion with no facts or sourcing included at all. While some web content come from known and trusted sources, there is also lots of intentionally and unintentionally false information in every form of web content and plenty of web pages and social media outlets to spread it around.
Checking for sources, searching for facts and confirming them, and using good judgment to critically analyze information that comes from web content are all good ways to determine if what you're reeing is real or bogus.