Digital Sobriety and Conscious Clicking

Before you began reading this post today, I guarantee you did one of the following at some point: sent a text message or a Snapchat, scrolled on Instagram, listened to some music, watched TV or YouTube on your phone, or Googled something. Now obviously that’s normal for nearly everyone nowadays, as the internet, phones, and computers have been so ingrained into our everyday lives. Most of us can’t live without it, and for a good reason. We can do nearly anything with the touch of a button, but that simple button click has far more effects than we believe. Every small activity and click you place every day comes with a cost. A small one though, but a few grams of carbon dioxide is emitted with every touch of a screen, as energy is needed to run the devices and to power the networks that we access all across the world. This number is fairly minuscule, but now 64% of the global population, about 5.1 billion people, use the internet. These scraps and smidges of energy quickly add up and still have a significant impact.

This post isn’t necessarily about a newer practice that can help the environment, but more to examine a portion of your everyday carbon footprint that you most likely have never really thought about, and possibly how you can reduce it (because there really is no way around without using the internet). 

Now, at our technological weight, the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet, and the systems supporting them, see about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, which is about the same amount of emissions as the airline industry emits globally. And these numbers will only get worse, as a study at Lancaster University predicts that internet emissions will double by 2025 as we progress further and further. But, the bright side here is we can limit these emissions purely by using the internet less and practicing clean-clicking procedures like “cleaning” your phones and devices when possible. 

Some other easy ways to reduce your digital carbon footprint are:

1. Turning off your devices when you won’t be using them for extended periods of time (about 2 hours or more) – devices still use energy often even when they are in “sleep” mode.
2. Clean out your inbox regularly – All of those emails sitting in your inbox are being stored in data centers, which use a lot of energy to power and keep cool
3. Try not to leave your devices plugged in for longer than they need to charge – a plugged-in device continues charging even if it is at full charge, and this also decreases the lifetime of the device’s battery
4. Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read or aren’t interested in – every email sent emits a small amount of CO2, so receiving fewer emails means fewer emails sent
5. Download audio files/music/videos instead of streaming them, or listen to CDs or the radio when you’re in the car – streaming uses more energy and therefore emits more greenhouse gases
6. Save bookmarks for websites you frequently visit – fewer searches means less energy used and fewer data stored
7. Consider setting limits for device use or screen time in general – this is not only beneficial to your lifestyle, as it opens up time for other activities, but it saves energy and data

Overall, it is best to be as conscious as possible with your internet use. Although most of the emissions related are nearly unavoidable, every small emission saved adds up. Each small step creates big steps, and can hopefully improve the state of both the internet and the environment.