The general, diffuse increase in glow was bad enough, but these moving beams constantly caught my attention until I could no longer bear to be outside. Then, for the first time I truly got away from urban areas and saw the Milky Way. For some reason or other, plastic and smog were the twin demons of my youthful environmentalism. Smog, and air pollution in general, are slightly less permanent, but they still linger and their effects tend to persist. The moment the lights go off the pollution vanishes.
Television is like that as well.
I've felt much cleaner not just since I've not owned one, but almost again as much since I've stopped going places where there's one on. The absence of its presence is a delight. I suspect that the net, and, in particular, the web is like that too. So much of the web is simply pollution. Much browsing time and skill is spent trying simply to see the sparsely scattered specs stand clear against a mottled, blinking field.