We’re all aware of pollution in our environment, but there is a less obvious form of pollution being created in vast amounts – digital pollution. Consider spam messages, scams, pointless emails, pointless websites, meaningless social media etc.

It all clogs up our email systems, social media feeds and the Internet generally and is a huge time-waster and for some can result in financial loss.

Digital pollution can make it more difficult to separate the valuable from the rubbish. It is a form of pollution where we are constantly assailed by advertising, spam, fake news, scam products and more endless rubbish. Here are some worrying statistics on spam messages.

• Approximately 14 billion spam emails are sent every single day
• Spam accounts for 45% of all emails sent
• 36% of all spam is some form of advertising

Personal Effect

This clearly depends on each person and how we deal with the Digital World and its pollution. It can lead to increased anxiety for some who struggle to sort out the rubbish from the valuable, financial loss for those taken in by scams, a great deal of time wasted for most and in some cases neuroses as people believe what they see on social media and compare their lives negatively to what’s represented.

We all need to take responsibility for removing as much of the pollution from our digital lives as we can and certainly not to created digital pollution in other people’s lives.

Effects on Society

For many people, tweets, posts and everything else on social media is irrelevant and they cannot be affected by Russian introduced fake news, political campaigning targeted at specific groups etc. But for most of us there is an effect caused by the torrent of misinformation and downright lies that can spread so quickly on social media, particularly at important times such as elections.

Will this undermine society?

You can make your own mind up, but it’s certainly not a positive effect.

Impact on Business

Businesses have had to learn to use social media to be in contact with their customers and in most cases that is a good effect, but it does open up methods of manipulation such as the offering of rewards by some companies for people who give their products good reviews.

Digital Pollution certainly huge amounts of peoples time and this can only lead to lower productivity.

Endless interruptions by your phone for notifications, messages, updates etc. can seriously interfere with your ability to get the job done.

How to Reduce the Effect of Digital Pollution on You

• Delete old emails, organise the ones you need by folder, unsubscribe from any services or newsletters that you never read.
• Send lighter emails – use services such as WeTransfer for sending emails with large attached files.
• Don’t download more movies or TV programmes than you can watch or use.
• Don’t spend a lot of time watching pointless YouTube videos.
• Restrict your use of social media to when you don’t have a lot of genuine work to do.
• Use disposable email addresses when signing up for online services. Then you can delete any disposable addresses that attract spam.
• Download movies and programmes rather than streaming where it is practical so you can watch again without further streaming.
• Only watch programmes on Live TV that are useful – not whatever rubbish happens to be broadcast at the time.

Control your digital life.