Infollution?
What is infollution?:
Infollution is a new word that combines "information" and "pollution" to connote the negative, polluting side effects of the IT revolution. Like pollution in our physical world, infollution in our digital world is an unintentional by-product of the excessive and uncontrolled use of resources.Here are three major forms of infollution.
Cyber violence
The National Crime Prevention Council's definition of cyber-bullying is "when the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person".As a new medium of instant human communication, the internet permits anonymity and multiple identities. Unchecked, this has allowed children to become cyberbully victims or even cyberbullies themselves. (to learn more about cyber bullying, visit stopcyberbullying.org).
The practice of cyberbullying is not limited to children. When adults use information and communication technology to deliberately harm others, it is referred to as cyberstalking or cyberharassment. Wikipedia defines Cyberstalking as the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization. It may include false accusations (spreading viral rumors), monitoring, making threats, identity theft, damage to data or equipment, the solicitation of minors for sex, or gathering information in order to harass. The definition of "harassment" must meet the criterion that a reasonable person, in possession of the same information, would regard it as sufficient to cause another reasonable person distress. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking)
Violent or obscene content
The openness of the web has led to easy access for children to violent or obscene materials such as pornography, violent or lewd texts, images, videos including online games and gambling. (http://www.internetsafety101.org) But at the same time it has allowed sexual predators to have easy and anonymous access to our children.According to a study done in 2007 by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, more than 40% of internet users ages 10 to 14 have viewed sexual images, and of those 66% said they did not seek them out.
Another study from Harvard School of Public Health showed that 94% of teen-rated video games showed depictions of violence, blood, sexual themes, profanity, substance use, and gambling (2004).
There are also increasing numbers of vicious sites, such as online hate groups (organized groups or movements that advocate hate, hostility or violence toward members of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or other designated sector of society) or online suicide communities.
Information overload
"Information overload" is a term that refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information.In the digital age, more and more people are participating in developing and distributing contents and information. With access to this overwhelming amount of information, almost instantaneously, it is difficult to know validity of the content and the risk of misinformation (Flew, New Media: An Introduction, 2008). This problem is exacerbated by emails, web search engine, mobile phones, and social media. Moreover, advances in data storage have far surpassed our ability to organize it. We have accumulated terabytes of unused information–from emails to video files. The more information we receive, the more difficult it is to filter out inaccurate or false information, and the harder it is to perform tasks and make decisions.
Although none of these examples is new to us, each is generally thought of separately. We propose "infollution" as an overarching concept to describe the collective impact of these negative side effects of the IT revolution.
See more information about “infollution” on its Wikipedia page.
Why should we do something about it?
The digital world is a 24/7 environment.
Today, ~80% of American households have a home computer, with over 70% of these households connected via a high-speed broadband internet connection. The average American spends thirteen hours per week on the internet excluding time spent checking email according to The Harris Poll (Dec, 2009). This amount is much higher for many teenagers. The internet, mobile phones, and other technology devices have created a 24/7 digital world that influences the lives of millions of people.Infollution pollutes our digital world.
Just as advances made in the industrial revolution carried with them the side effects of pollution in our physical world, the IT era has generated an influx of information sources and forms that can, at times do, overwhelm us. Infollution is the information pollution in today’s growing digital world that negatively impacts our daily lives. Infollution comes in many forms, and infollutionZERO targets some of the most prevalent and potentially harmful, including:- Cyber violence
- Obscene and violent content
- Information overload
As we spend increasing amounts of time living in the digital world, we also become increasingly exposed to these types of infollution and the burdens they place on our time, productivity and well-being.
Our kids are in danger.
The digital world has recircuited our brains, which are now accustomed to the language of text messages and skimming the vast amounts of information available on the internet. The effects of this transformation are especially pronounced for our youth. Some of behavioral disorders such as attention deficit disorder are shown to be related to internet, mobile or video game addictions, which potentially have detrimental effects for our children’s health and academic performance.Other challenges of the digital world for kids are its anonymity and open-access, which increase the risk of sexual crimes and exposure. In some instances, child predators have disguised themselves online in order to gain the trust of vulnerable youth and perform horrific crimes. Easily accessible, adult content online also runs the risk of exposing children to pornographic or violent materials which are inappropriate for their age. Medical studies have demonstrated that children with early exposure to sexual materials online have difficulty forming personal relationships later on and are more likely to commit acts of violence, including rape.
With the growth of the digital world, an increasing number of young people are also experiencing identity crises as their actual and digital identities grow separately, one rooted in the physical world and the other(s) cloaked in the anonymity of the digital world. And while children represent one strongly affected demographic of infollution, no one living in the digital world is immune to its effects.
Infollution affects you
If you are reading this message, then it is likely you already experience infollution on a regular basis. Yet many forms of infollution have become so common that we may not even be consciously aware of them. Are you:- overwhelmed by constant emails and text messages, both solicited and unsolicited, and often generated by spam or phishing sources?
- lost among the vast amounts of information you come across on a search engine, not sure which sources to trust?
- worried about whether your children are using digital technology in a healthy way?
If so, then infollution is already a part of your life, and it may affect your quality of life in a multitude of ways.
Infollution is a problem at work, home and in our environment.
In the digital world, information is transmitted effortlessly and almost instantaneously. While this provides benefits, one of the drawbacks is that information transfer has become independent of information quality. American workers are beset by large amounts of personal and corporate e-mail and voice and text exchanges that are often of low-quality or factually inaccurate. Rather than improving work and life, this overload of information significantly hinders work efficiency and quality. In addition, individuals, stock markets, and corporations have greatly suffered from anonymous internet rumors that have grown virally, leading to financial losses and emotional traumas.Infollution harms the physical environment as well. Data transmission across the internet requires large sums of energy that often come from our most polluted sources. In one of the most popular online computer games in America, Second Life, users create and raise fictional characters that each require 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, an amount which is almost equivalent to that consumed by the average Brazilian.
Despite the gains experienced through the growth of IT, many industry experts have concluded that the upward trajectory of digital media and technology is not sustainable unless infollution is recognized as an important public issue and serious efforts are made to reduce it. Many organizations and programs are dedicated to solving the problems of different types of infollution. infollutionZERO is committed to better understanding the infollution concept by creating an open-access, collaborative environment where volunteers work together to improve our definition of infollution and develop new ways to address it. For more information about our organization, please click here.
