As a community, Baton Rouge should be pushing to remove billboards to clean up our skies and promote tourism. When people visit Louisiana, they usually come for New Orleans. Removing billboards could change that.

Driving down I-10, the only thing you can see are billboards. Advertisements fill the sky telling you where to eat, what to wear and what TV shows to watch. These advertisements are unnecessary when everyone has a smartphone with a navigation feature on it.

With a smartphone, you can map where you want to go and don’t need a billboard to tell you. If you want to go somewhere you can look it up, but instead huge billboards tell you where to go.

In Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont, it is illegal to put up billboards. Coincidentally, these four states are known for being very beautiful, scenic places. Billboards take away from the view of your city and only add sky pollution. How many Gordon McKernan signs do I need to see on my way to work?

Some people argue taking down billboards would hurt businesses. That could be possible for some businesses at first, but it would be worth it. In the four aforementioned states, business owners understand eliminating billboards promotes tourism and would lead to greater long-term benefits. A billboard ban would level the playing field  between local businesses and national chains. Removing billboards could allow attorneys besides McKernan to garner business.

Replacing billboards with local art or taking them down completely would be the best solution. If local artists were given the chance to show their skills on billboards, it would brighten up the city. It would give artists a platform to promote their art rather than clutter the sky with never-ending advertisements. This would give young people more exposure to art and possibly inspire them to become involved in fine arts. Young artists would dream of being on a billboard one day.

Billboards do little good for businesses today because of technology. Companies save money doing online advertising because it is relatively free to post on social media. Companies don’t have to pay someone to design a billboard or pay to rent the space. There is no rent on social media and you can produce as many posts as you’d like.

Banning billboards in Baton Rouge would cost businesses less, promote tourism and clean up our skies. There are no negatives in removing them, and as a community, we should advocate for this.

Ashlon Lusk is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Houston, Texas.