The Internet is a Fossil Fuel

Now that we know what our devices do to us, it's time to begin moving toward a more sustainable source of connection.

In 1983, the internet was born.

This may have been one of the best things that ever happened to humankind.

At some point in the 90s, the internet became fun.

That’s when things started going downhill.

There has recently been an influx of mournful articles and newsletters about how miserable a place the internet has become these days. As far as I can tell, they were spawned in large part by this New Yorker piece titled “Why the Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore.”

People are sad that the open, wild-west frontier days of the internet are behind us, now that a few corporations control pretty much all of its primary forums, and people like Elon Musk seem hellbent on stripping away everything that made them wonderful.

My reaction?

Good. Let the internet become terrible.

Maybe the internet shouldn’t be fun. The more fun the internet has become, the worse it’s been for us.

Don’t believe me?

Consider that on average, teenagers today spend 8.5 hours a day on connected devices. This only includes the time they use screens for social media, gaming, or messaging — not schoolwork or homework.

Are teenagers today more or less happy than before the ubiquity of the “fun internet” and mobile devices?

I think you know the answer to that one.

Are there other factors? Surely. But none of them has nearly as strong a correlation between the time spent on connected devices and the increase in mental health struggles, anxiety, depression, body image issues, and thoughts of suicide.

Why do teenagers spend so much time online?

Because it’s fun and useful.

It’s fun and it’s useful and it’s hurting us.

This isn’t a contradiction. Things that are fun and useful kill us all the time. Drugs. Driving. Risky behavior.

Oh, and fossil fuels.

If you forget everything that we’ve learned about fossil fuels over the last few decades, they’re amazing. Incredible! They’ve been responsible for so much of humanity’s amazing progress, and a lot of our fun.

That’s what the internet is. It’s an unsustainable source of energy that did a lot of good for us for a long time, while also quietly killing us without our knowledge. And like fossil fuels, the internet is still extraordinarily useful.

But now that we know what it’s doing to us, what are we going to do about it?

Put on a black veil and mourn its demise?

We don’t sit around writing think pieces about how fun burning petroleum used to be, back in those innocent days when we didn’t realize it was going to kill billions of living creatures and possibly all of humankind.

The International Energy Agency recently reported that they expect global fossil fuel use to peak by 2025 and then begin declining. We still have a lot more work to do if we want to keep global temperature rise below the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, but it’s genuinely miraculous that in such a short time we’ve come upon the moment when fossil fuel use worldwide will begin to decrease.

But the truth is that we’ve known what fossil fuels were doing to the environment for a long time. Why has it taken us so long to act?

Because oil is easy, and the alternatives are hard. Solar, wind, nuclear, and other alternative energy sources have confronted us with cost and efficacy barriers which have slowed our progress.

So what did we do?

We gave up, of course, and decided to simply keep burning fossil fuels forever so we can keep doing the things we like doing until the world becomes uninhabitable in a couple decades.

Oh wait, no we didn’t.

We kept trying and testing and exploring and refining alternative energy sources, and we continue to do so, because we know that — despite their advantages — fossil fuels are hurting us.

It’s time for us to start thinking about the internet and online life the same way. Yes, it has benefits. It connects people from far away. It has journalistic impact, helping shine a light on injustices and spread movements. It can inform and entertain and educate us.

But when we talk about the internet, we often ask: “Does it do any good?”

But the question should be: “Does it do enough good to justify how harmful it is?”

That’s the magic question when it comes to sustainable energy. It should also be the question we ask about our connected lives.

If the internet has become a less fun, less open, less inspiring, less surprising, less delightful place, then maybe it’s done us all a favor. It’s made it easier for us to quit.

Maybe the 2020s will be the decade of the Great Signoff, when the internet goes from life-eating monolith back to the niche tool it used to be.

What’s the alternative? That’s a question for smarter minds than mine. But some of those smarter minds are already coming up with potential ideas, including a turn to more local and community-centric networks.

I’m not advocating for the end of the internet. Hell, this newsletter only exists on the internet. But our viciously declining mental health and the pandemic-like spread of misinformation demand radical solutions.

The cost might be significant. The convenience of “everything devices” will be a loss that we’ll feel once we start reducing what we let our devices do for us. But every necessary social change comes with some sort of trade off.

After all, it’s somewhat insane to think that the tool we use to navigate to the closest grocery store is the same one we use to find out what people are saying about Britney Spears’ new memoir and also where we watch graphic combat footage from distant wars.

It’s time to ask ourselves: Does “more capable” mean “better”? When it came to fossil fuels, we discovered that the answer is no. The cost was too great.

When it comes to the internet, and the devices we use to enjoy it, we might just discover that the answer is the same. What will we do about it?

As a society, that question might just help define the next decade.

But as individual people trying to live more fulfilling, meaningful lives, it comes down to reframing the question of what role social media and digital devices play in our lives.

Don’t ask whether it does any good.

Ask: “Does it do enough good to justify how harmful it is?”