social media – Hopeful Fatalist

It seems strange that being online is causing pollution. We are using a computer, reducing the need for paper, not travelling distances to communicate, and we are using mostly energy efficient machines that have a low average electricity consumption. So why does being online cause pollution? And what can we do to reduce it?
In this part, we will be giving you tips on how to reduce your personal carbon footprint impact. In part 2, we will give you tips on how your company can act greener and reduce its Internet pollution impact!
I gathered the best advice from various sources, I hope you will enjoy the content!

Internet Pollution

Are you familiar with the term Internet pollution? It is a term that refers to the pollution caused by the data processing servers and data centers, since they consume a lot of energy. In fact, a data center on average consumes the same amount of energy as 30’000 European inhabitants DAILY! Energy is used to power and cool down servers, and ensures that they operate c continuously in case there’s a failure. Since the world still relies heavily on dirty energy, this energy is causing an additional release of CO2!

Retrieved from CCCB Lab, Source: Jon Koomey.

The Internet pollution, also known as Digital Pollution, originates mainly from activities that require a lot of resources, such as streaming videos, mining for bitcoins, and sending/storing emails.

How can I help?

You may think that as a user, you may not make a difference. It is true that the upgrade of data centers and servers is up to the companies. But you can reduce your own activities’ carbon footprint and energy requirements with a few steps:

Take care of your email

Clean your inbox regularly, and get rid of those thousands of emails that you stored a long time ago to read later on, but never did. If you are a nostalgic person and you saved every email your friends and family sent you, just save these letters on your computer and remove them from your inbox, you’ll be doing the Earth a favor.

Unsubscribe from the useless newsletters that you do not read, it will reduce the distraction created by recurrent incoming mail, reduce the number of emails uselessly stored, and help you find the important emails faster.

Send short, clear, and easy to read emails, with optimized attachements. It will require less energy to send and receive the content, and your recipient(s) will need less time to read the email, and understand your goals better. If the email is unclear, you will receive back another email demanding clarifications, which will cause an unnecessary amount of energy to be spent for additional emails.

Use compressed and light format files in your email attachements and when uploading files to an online drive. If you are sharing a photo with family, prefer JPEG format to Bitmap to reduce the size, and you can always resize it. Although a 10 megapixels photo is cool, unless you need professional work done on the photo, you can have a great photo quality for 5 megapixels as well. You can easily resize the photo using Paint or online tools.

Don’t check your email all the time. To avoid missing out on important emails, we advise you to have a personal email for all the personal emails, and a professional email for all education and work emails.
You can stop all the incoming email notifications during work hours from your personal email, and you can disconnect from work by turning off the notifications of your professional emails during your off-work time. Not only will you reduce the carbon footprint, you will also be able to work with much less interruptions and have a better performance during work hours, and be able to disconnect better from work and its stress in your off-duty hours.

Unless you REALLY NEED to, don’t use the “reply to all” option when sending back an email. Send the follow-up message only to the concerned people.

Make use of the subject line in emails to inform your recipient about the content, so they know whether it is urgent/important enough to read on the spot, or whether they can read it later.

Act more responsibly online

This part is really important. You need to reduce any unnecessary carbon emissions that your online presence may cause.

Choose a greener online cloud service, use lighter file formats, and reduce the unnecessary use of online space. We know it’s awesome to have a free cloud storage and put all our treasured memories, but it is also consuming too much energy, when you can keep an offline copy on an external storage and/or your computer. Make sure to back-up regularly your files and remove that 4 year old university project that you saved online when you feared you might lose it.

Reduce the number of photos you share on social media by removing unnecessary photos. These photos take a large space off servers, and with the increasing number of users, companies keep on adding data servers to cover the need. Your school photos are really cute, but do you really need an album of 100 photos to confirm it?

Delete your old accounts if you no longer use them, and don’t create unnecessary email addresses just for fun. Although it’s cool to have 1 extra free month from Netflix when using a new account, it’s doing a lot of harm when you consider the number of users doing it.

Bookmark the websites you always visit, instead of researching them every time you want to use them. It will save a whole lot of energy.

Reduce the time you spend online. Since pages usually keep on loading, if you have a long read, you can download the web page as offline copy, or simply disconnect yourself from the internet until you need to use it again.

Optimize your research by using specific keywords and favorite your frequent searches. Remember that each search is using more energy. Prefer using green search engines like Ecosia, as they use way less energy, and prefer clean energy to dirty one. In addition, many of them use the revenue to support an environmental cause!

Research the companies whose services you’re using. You will discover which ones are working towards greener services and which ones do not care about it at all. A good reference is RE100, a reference for companies that pledged to use 100% renewable energy. RE100 is a global corporate leadership initiative bringing together influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity. You can also check Clickclean, an initiative by Greenpeace. They do annual reports on the green performance of large corporations, and they do campaigns to influence companies to turn green through petitions.

The next time you think that you can be more eco-friendly when using online services, think twice! Sometimes, their environmental impact is worse than doing things the traditional way. If you can communicate it live, prefer it to sending emails or instant messages. If you feel safe to store a file on local drives, prefer it to cloud systems.

One person may have a small impact, but when a group of people do it, they can make a difference and inspire others to do so as well. So make sure to inform others on how to reduce their online carbon footprint as well!

With the numerous social media platforms, we are able to reconnect and stay in touch with so many acquaintances and friends. It is even the best way to know about a person’s taste and personality. It is also a good chance for us to observe the narcissism growing in a rather scary way, so fast that it is becoming almost normal for a person to fall in love with herself.

While being well aware of how important it is to love ourselves, so we know what we deserve and know our own worth, it is becoming, at least for me, somehow too unhealthy the amount of love we can give to ourselves, to the limit that we praise ourselves and flirt with ourselves, and others who fail to see us the same way are just too jealous or too blind to see it.
In Lebanon, we have a saying: “a monkey in its mother’s eyes is a deer”, meaning that the eyes of our loved ones see us more beautiful than we really are, whether in character or appearance. But it seems that it should be changed to “a monkey in its own eyes is a deer”! I know some would say this is harsh to say, or I am just jealous or something like that. But it is actually becoming too unhealthy, the amount of love we are showing to ourselves. I have been observing the people I have on different social medias for a while now, mostly Facebook. Some occasionally post pictures of themselves, some do it all the time, and others hardly ever post a picture. We have the people who share every meal with us, the ones who share their events, and those who are silent, sharing the football results or a status, hardly anything personal being publicly announced. So far, it’s normal, if we compare to the real social life offline, there are people who share a lot, others who are quiet. But the thing I have been noticing and that really seems worrying is the number of people flirting with themselves.

I somehow find it a bit too much when a girl is talking about her own appearance in the way that a guy should be: “her eyes glow like diamonds, her hair is as smooth as silk”. Posted by her on her own photos. Another time, I came across something like “her eyes speak the truth, they shine in the darkest times, and her tear speaks without words”… also on her own pictures. Shouldn’t that be the job of her “fans” to speak this way?? And the same goes for men, who however seem to show abs and bulges with less words.

Am I the only one who thinks that the increasing number of similar posts and similar people is a bit too concerning? Not to talk about the crazy number of selfies daily! I had to restrict some people’s posts off my newsfeed as I was unable to see anyone else’s posts! And that damn selfie-stick, it’s like the cherry on top of the cake! I hate it so much, I can’t see those pictures with the stupid stick at the bottom of the photo, and it is everywhere! Who goes out with and extendable stick and take pictures in a crowded club or at a wedding??

On the other hand, there is another concern, the increasing number of people feeling bad with themselves because they are not following such trends, or because they do not fit the new beauty or cool standards. I mean there were bullies and mockers, but now, even when people are a the comfort of their own house, they can’t communicate online without being forced to see people who are showing off and somehow rubbing other people’s faces with what they have. You can see parties, expensive clothes, fake boobs, heavy make-up, fake smiles, and it all seems to be what you should be doing this season. There is a big number of people who are “giving no shit” about such trends, but these people have faced lots of pressure and made it. An even higher number of people is being influenced and they can’t handle the pressure. They crack and hate themselves, to the point of either altering their appearance and their thinking to fit in, or just hurt themselves in an attempt to run away. I still have in mind a young girl in her teenage years who committed suicide after so many people mocked her online and bullied her.

However, I felt that I am maybe the only one out there concerned about this trend, as everyone was into it. So I started searching about studies or medical opinion, anything that would help me feel like I am not the only one concerned. And in one google search, I found thousands of articles and studies who are alerting of this rise of narcissism and its bad effects. I will be sharing some links for those who are interested in reading them at the end of this post. And they all agreed that the social media has turned from an intermediate mean to connect with others, to a self-loving space, where people want to make others jealous and are trying to even be more self-centered.

Should we abandon Social Medias? No, I am against such ideas, Social Medias are also a great way to spread knowledge, to feel less disconnected, to help others, to increase awareness to many issues. However, there should be an awareness campaign about such issues, it is very unhealthy to encourage such behaviors, we are forgetting others, becoming egocentric beings, and this could only lead to more disasters! People who are too busy with themselves forget others’ needs and problems, forget that there are people out there suffering and that they could help them. Self-centered people only care about their own comfort, forgetting about the impact of what they do on their surroundings, forgetting that they can be a change in this world, that instead of changing their make-up and their clothes, they can be changing the world and making it a better place.

I wish we can all raise awareness that it is more important to work together towards fixing this world’s problems, instead of caring about our pictures and how to make others feel bad about themselves. Let’s say NO to getting desensitized towards others because we are too self-absorbed!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-firestone/facebook-narcissism_b_1905073.html
http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/mar/13/selfie-social-media-love-digital-narcassism
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140911175326-66132034-social-media-and-narcissism-rise-of-a-self-obsessed-society
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140703102510.htm
http://www.ted.com/conversations/18501/are_people_really_more_narciss.html
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/young-people-today-are-more-narcissistic-than-ever/5457236