Date of Award

Spring 5-16-2022

Degree Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Environmental Studies

Advisor(s)

John van Buren

Abstract

Many activities and work traditionally performed in person have shifted online in the past few years. The sudden surge in the use and reliance on the Internet strongly underlined how it has affected consumerism and thus the environment. In this light, this research seeks to address how billions of people's daily use of the Internet intensifies their consumption habits and degrades the environment altogether at high speed. The ramifications of Internet use are observed from three specific perspectives: economic, psychological, and political. As such, this research paper is broken down into five chapters. The first chapter observes the environmental issues resulting from the use of the Internet and explores the Internet and its technologies’ role in consumerism, and its effects on society due to the degradation of the environment. Physical effects, such as air pollution and e-waste caused by the Internet are also observed. The following chapter 2 explores how our habits in E-commerce and cryptocurrency are unsustainable. Chapter 3 observes the digital footprint and discusses why society consumes so much. One of the reasons is triggers from advertisements and commercials on the Internet. This chapter also looks at the correlation between generation Z's Internet use and their increased susceptibility to mental health issues such as Nature Deficit-disorder. The fourth chapter explores the way users communicate online about environmental topics and what actions they might take, as a result, as well as the influencers' role and trends in consumerism habits. It also looks at information pollution and how this might affect discourse online. In Chapter 5, a few policies concerning the management of online advertisements and the Internet technologies are observed as a potential solution to the problems raised throughout the paper.

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