Environmental Costs of Social Media Advertising
Through core courses of information science, I was surprised to learn about the issues of finding enough space for digital storage and the implications for what can get lost along the way, often due to costs and challenges in setting up systems to maintain it. It was a similar feeling, then, when I recently heard more about the environmental implications of online advertising. We have been learning about social media’s impact on business, as the ever-increasing number of social media users has resulted in an increase in advertisers as part of their monetization strategy.
In its overview of The Environmental Impact of Advertising, Earth.org analyzes digital advertising’s impact, noting that “It can be difficult to comprehend that the digital world even has a carbon footprint.”. While it seems like we are saving paper and other related printing costs, the ads that pop up on our screen consume electricity. Much has been reported on low-quality ads, especially those that linger, resulting in a higher level of them.
It is similar to the issue of information loss, as its potentially broad effects are not part of many people’s thoughts when they are using technology. What could be lost forever is information, but now we’re seeing many aspects of the natural world that could also be lost forever. Scope3 is a company that advises and designs strategies for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, but as with information storage and archiving issues, the environmental problems created by digital advertising, particularly in the social media realm where it may be least expected as a problem, needs to be a public mission as well.
This is such an eye-opening post! Thank you for sharing. Most of us think about the positive impact of the internet and online advertising - so much less paper! And even digital signs seem like they would be more environmentally conscious - thinking about the materials used in making new billboards all the time. There is a probably some benefit, but in reality humans are the little ants that take over, no matter what we do! I literally had that picture in my head as I read the Earth.org article. Tiny ants with phones in their faces just absorbing every bit and sucking the planet's life away! One step forward and another one back.
ReplyDelete"Tiny ants with phones in their faces" is a brilliant, simultaneously sad and funny analogy to humans. And "no matter what we do", the tragicomedy.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder how much energy all the devices we use regularly process or how much energy is consumed by various internet activities like social media. I know certain apps drain the battery on my phone more than others, so logically, they likely use more energy. Many people switch to ebooks from physical books to not only save space and money but to conserve resources with less paper and ink, but the digital data still has to use some energy. Shouldn't energy conservation be yet another reason for online advertisers on social media to make their ads more efficient? I think so. First, though, I suppose organizations have to be convinced digital information has a carbon footprint.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's tricky to calculate the tradeoff for something like ebooks vs. paper, but given what we've learned about the increasing number of ads -especially the ones that sit around for a while or are embedded at the bottom of otherwise credible newsfeeds, "convinced", as you put it -and/or publicly acknowledging ads' excessive energy consumption- are the key words.
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