Digital sobriety is an approach that aims to reduce the environmental impact of digital technology. The French expression “la sobriété numérique” was coined in 2008 by the association GreenIT.fr to designate "the approach that consists of designing more sober digital services and moderating one's daily digital uses".

For The Shift Project, a think-tank working towards a carbon-free economy, "digital sobriety means moving from an instinctive or even compulsive digital world to a controlled digital world that chooses its directions: in view of the opportunities, but also in view of the risks.” 

How do we go about making this transition to a more frugal industry? To answer this question, we interviewed two experts who contributed to The Shift Project's report “Towards Digital Sobriety”: the Shift Project's new report on the environmental impact of ICT. 

A question of usage

According to Bruno Foucras, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a lecturer in the Thermal Engineering and Energy Department of the Aix-Marseille University Institute of Technology, "what comes up most often when we talk about digital sobriety was the question of usage. What do we want to do with digital technology?”. Sylvain Baudouin, an engineer from the Ecole Centrale de Paris and a graduate of IAE who works in Big Data and IT project management, adds that "someone who is sober is someone who does not drink. Sobriety therefore leads to an increasingly reduced use of digital technology.

This concept is important to understand because we are currently in a phase of exponential digital growth (6 to 7% per year). At regular intervals, we double the digital production that today emits, on a global scale, about as much CO2 as aeroplanes and that could reach the level of cars in just a few years.

The Shift Project's study of our digital habits concludes that we need to regain control. "Our digital habits are now built around automatisms, attention-grabbing designs and economic models that make the continuous consumption of ubiquitous content profitable. Technology has gone beyond the status of a mere tool. It is now part of our daily lives in all spheres: professional, academic, family, public, etc. 

For the think-tank, the solution will be built on a collective scale. Indeed, "our digital hyper-consumption as it exists today is the result of identified psycho-social mechanisms". Controlling our digital uses is therefore a matter of public policy. 

Individual awareness supported by local authorities

However, this scaling up first requires individual awareness. A step that consists in understanding how our uses and their effects have an impact. It provides a basis for collective debate, which will be used to implement actions on a larger scale.

Depending on the use we want to make of digital technology, we can implement actions at different levels. For example, local authorities have a role to play in regulating consumption by businesses. For Sylvain, the law will certainly have to take up this issue by imposing actions in favour of digital sobriety. But he emphasises that it is above all a process of acculturation that applies to all environments. Indeed, "what we do in a company, we must apply at home and vice versa". For Bruno, making laws is often seen as depriving people of certain freedoms. Therefore, in order to avoid frustration, the development of digital technologies needs to be thought through in advance, instead of creating needs that have not yet been expressed. 

But how can we tell the difference between need and want? Bruno replies: “For example, companies have taught their employees that printing documents is not always necessary. How? By making it a constraint. Some departments have moved printers further away from offices.” The same applies to digital technology. They can normalise certain behaviours such as limiting the sending of large attachments or unnecessary "ok thanks" emails. This acculturation can also be achieved through asking a simple question: "If we removed a particular digital element from your environment, would you survive?” The answer is often yes, as is the case with YouTube.

On the other hand, legislative aspects or the growing inequalities related to digital inclusion are often highlighted as strong arguments to promote sobriety within companies. 

Finally, the question of resilience is an interesting one, as Sylvain explains. “Am I really resilient when I implement new digital tools? For example, if they break down, aren't the problems I face greater than if I had not developed these tools?”. He concludes, "When you design a new process or tool, you have to challenge the paper alternative. In the public service, we know that dematerialisation is not inclusive and has created other sources of problems”. 

How can digital sobriety be deployed in practice?

Think before you act is an expression that is perfectly suited to what Sylvain Baudouin and Bruno Foucras have to say about digital sobriety. "Turning to digital should no longer be our first instinct" explains Bruno. We should ask ourselves questions before making any decisions. Do we really need to track delivery trucks? Not always, but we do it because we can. “This is what we call the rebound effect” explains Sylvain. Technology is more accessible, so we use it rather than lowering our footprint. 

Of course, technological change can be extremely positive and necessary, but do we always have to bring out the big guns? Are we really adopting new ways of using digital technology because we need them and because they are useful to citizens or humanity? Or do we just want to be “smarter”? This is one of the buzzwords to be wary of, according to Bruno. Just because a technology is "green" or "smart" does not mean that it should be adopted at all costs. 

We will conclude this article with some advice from Bruno, who shares his approach as a teacher to apply digital sobriety in his daily professional life:  

• Go to meetings without a phone or laptop. Switch off devices when we don't need them. 
• Print only when necessary 
• Use a collaborative digital platform to avoid attachments  
• Produce videos with a maximum resolution of 720p 
• Diversify learning materials by using audio and not only video
• Give priority to the quality of your equipment: prefer a computer that is a little more expensive but of better quality, that you will keep for 6 years instead of 3 
• Despite strong social pressure, try to fight immediate responses.  For example, do not reply to emails within 24 hours. The more time you take to respond, the less you need to write.

As Sylvain says, “thinking is about taking your time. We have to accept to slow down in order to bounce back and go back to more reasonable project processing times.” 

Antoine Amiel, founder of Learn Assembly and EPALE thematic coordinator for ecological and digital transitions.