How JavaScript Overuse Ruined the Web

Nowadays, we come across many websites where the pages are too slow. They take a while to load simple content like thumbnails, texts, and pictures. Most of the time, these pages are slow not because of your internet speed, but because of the technology the websites use for serving content on their webpages. It's the overuse of JavaScript, led by JavaScript frameworks, that causes this slowness of websites.

Modern web development heavily relies on JavaScript frameworks, and for good reason - they make developers' lives easier. These frameworks help developers organize their code efficiently, making it simpler to maintain and update websites over time. They can modify individual components without disrupting the entire codebase, significantly speeding up the development process.
However, there's an interesting dynamic at play in the industry. Major tech companies actively promote their own frameworks, and many programming influencers on YouTube advocate for solutions like React or NextJS while partnering with cloud platforms designed specifically for these frameworks. Take NextJS, for instance, which is owned by Vercel, a cloud platform. While using NextJS with Vercel offers optimal performance and seamless deployment, it also creates a dependency. Developers invest significant time learning these platform-specific tools, and if they ever need to switch platforms, they might have to learn an entirely new framework.

The real problem is for the people actually using these sites. Websites packed with JavaScript need a lot of computing power. A single page can send out hundreds or even thousands of API requests just to load, eating up CPU and RAM. If you’ve got a high-end device, you might not even notice, but for anyone with an older or less powerful computer, it’s a headache. Their devices lag, take forever to load, and the battery drains way faster than it should.
This inefficiency has a real impact on the environment. With billions of people using the internet, all that extra power needed to process unnecessary JavaScript adds up—meaning devices need to be charged more often. That makes you wonder just how much energy is being wasted by these heavy, framework-packed websites. Also, many people are throwing out their old devices because of these problems, creating more e-waste. Sure, frameworks make things easier for developers, but users end up paying the price with slower performance, shorter battery life, and higher energy consumption.

Here’s a video of a guy showing how hard it is to browse modern websites using old hardware: