What to Do With All Those Photos and Videos on Your Phone

You might be the reason the world is breaking.

No, really. According to recent research from IBM, 90% of the recorded data created in human history was generated in the past two years. This is mostly because of the two billion smartphones in use globally, and the fattest data they generate: photos and videos.

So when you take a few dozen shirtless selfies, you are personally contributing to the 1.8 billion photos taken every day.

But before our civilization implodes from a dataclysm, let's talk about where you can put all of those videos and pictures overloading your phone.

Step 1: Get your phone to auto-backup to a cloud service

"Cloud" is a neologism (meaning "a word they made up ‘cause there ain't no word for it") that describes companies that build huge, distributed data centers around the world, and then sell you a tiny bit of real estate on their servers--or give you the space for free.

There are a whole lot of companies competing to store your stuff for free. Dropbox, Mega, Microsoft's OneDrive, Apple's iCloud, Copy, box, mozy, the list goes on. All of them can work, with various levels of difficulty and fuss. An argument could be made for any of them, and we won't bore you with all the pros and cons.

Let's just pick one we know works and works well: Google Drive.

(Related: New Study Reveals Even More Ways Your Smartphone Is Stressing You Out)

Here's how you set up your cloud backup:

1. Sign up for a Gmail account if you don't have one already--and you should, since it's consistently ranked as the best email service on the planet.

2. Download the Google Drive app for Android, iOS, or Windows Phone.

3. Tell Drive to auto-backup your camera phone. (Easy-peasy on Android and iOS, slightly involved on a Windows Phone.)

4. You're done.

It's a little involved, but the free storage rules go like this: Google gives you 15 gigabytes for free. Which is not a lot. But it's more than meets the eye, because Google has a funky formula for calculating your digital real estate.

For example, "normal" resolution photos and videos don't count toward your storage total. So that 15 gigabytes is fine and dandy for the average user. (And buying more space is silly cheap.)

But let's say you're taking massive HDR photos and 4k videos, and you blow through your 15 gigs. In that case, you need a more serious storage solution than anything we're going to talk about today--you need a NAS and/or a paid cloud setup.

(Some files you'd rather make disappear. Find out How to Erase Porn from Your Old Computers.)

Step 2: Erase your phone's camera data to make space.

First, go to your Google Drive Photos and make sure your backup is working. Don't do a thing until you see that your stuff is backed up.

Next, it's time to delete stuff off your phone.

There are a few ways of doing this, including getting into a "camera-only delete mode" and tapping each picture to delete, but that's not practical if you have hundreds or thousands of snaps. Here's an easier way:

1. Plug your phone into your main computer.

2. Open the phone as you would a hard drive. (Or in "file explorer mode" if you're on Windows.)

3. The magic folder you're looking for is called DCIM. (Which stands for "digital camera image management," which is why you should never let engineers name anything ever.) DCIM is the folder that will contain all of your pictures and videos.

4. If you're having trouble finding the DCIM folder, use the "search" features built into Windows or OS X.

5. Now a bonus step: You can copy the entire DCIM folder to your computer, so you have a local copy as well as your cloud backup.

6. Open the DCIM folder, and find the sub-folder that's full of gigabytes of photos. It will probably be called "camera" or "photos" or something like that. When you find it, you'll know it.

7. Hit "select all" (which is either control-A on Windows or command-A in OS X).

8. Hit "delete." Feel a rush of fear and excitement as the files go bye-bye.

9. You're done.

So there you go. You now have gobs of space on your phone, and a secure, anything-short-of-apocalypse-secure backup of your photos and videos online.

(Even with all that extra space, you might want to consider putting the phone down. Find out how Your Phone Is Killing Your Sex Life.)