Is Wi-Fi bad for the environment? Eye-catching London ad suggests Wi-Fi is ‘damaging the climate’

A PhD student shared a photograph of an ad for the University of East London, implying that Wi-Fi is detrimental to the environment (h/t vx-underground). The poster says, “WiFi doesn’t grow on trees. Your screen time is damaging the climate.” Although it’s easy to assume that it’s telling us that wireless networking is bad for the environment, a second look at the message focuses more on the time we spend in front of our phones, tablets, smart TVs, and computers, rather than on the Wi-Fi transmission itself.

Its initial message was intended to catch the attention of the public, with the ad showing a link to the organization’s ‘Think Again’ campaign that challenges the status quo. If you visit that page, you’ll see that one of the topics covered there is society’s use of social media and how it’s pushing data centers across the globe to produce more emissions than those generated by the global airline industry. It goes on to show how the University is driving research to make data centers more sustainable, reducing the negative impact of our use of social media on the environment.

The poster doesn’t really say that Wi-Fi is bad for the environment — it only tells you that it doesn’t grow on trees. University of East London’s ad did gather the interest of the people who saw it, especially as it seemingly contradicted something that most of us know as fact — that Wi-Fi is safe. It’s quite effective, too. However, this ad can be easily misunderstood by some people, especially conspiracy theorists who think wireless technology is dangerous (like 5G) and are encouraging everyone to start wearing tin foil hats.

Nevertheless, we did see some hilarious responses to vx-underground’s post, including users who were thinking about how it would be possible to use a router to cause actual harm to the environment by building a massive router that puts out high-energy microwaves. There are also a few who wanted to determine the actual energy consumption of every Wi-Fi device plugged into the outlet across the U.K., and some who are pondering the actual physical weight of the data transmitted across the waves.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.