How Digital Pollution Threatens Our Society (and how we can combat it)
The following is an excerpt from my article published on MIT Sloan Management Review titled Combating the Toll of Digital Pollution. It introduces the concept of Digital Pollution — just as environmental pollution is a byproduct of industrial growth, digital pollution is a side-effect of the unregulated tech boom.
Digital pollution is having a profound impact on society, but until now we’ve not recognized it as a form of pollution. Today, we understand the importance of reducing our carbon footprint to save the environment. Similarly, in building (and using) products, we must strive for a cleaner digital footprint if we are to combat the toll of digital pollution.
If you went back to London in the 1600s, you would find a coal-fired metropolis, where heavy smoke from the city’s burning hearths and furnaces damaged buildings. Only during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, when respiratory diseases became the leading cause of death in the city, did people finally recognize how air pollution was affecting their quality of life. It took even longer to galvanize people into action, with laws finally enacted in the 20th century to improve air quality in London.
We know how fossil fuels and other byproducts of the industrial age have affected people’s health and contributed to the climate crisis. In the digital era, a new kind of pollution, fueled by technology growth and dependence, has had an unintended yet profound impact on society. As business leaders, we urgently need to understand these effects so we can build our businesses and develop our products more responsibly.
We have started to see the consequences of the growth in the tech sector. But until now, we’ve never recognized these consequences as pollution resulting from unregulated digital growth. The impact of the digital era can be categorized into three types of pollution:
