Playing Social Media Causes Climate Change? Here's The Explanation

The impact of using social media on carbon emissions (photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Currently, who does not know social media. From Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, to TikTok, it has been widely used. From morning to night, most likely we will very often look at our cellphone screens.

Especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit almost all over the world, almost all activities were carried out online. It also forces us to use our phones, laptops or tablets on a daily basis.

According to an analysis from research firm Compare the Market, using social media can also contribute to the climate crisis. While social media is not destroying the planet, this research highlights the unexpected ways that fossil fuels still rely and the need for countries to stop them.

Compare the Market created a website and named the ten social media applications that leave the most carbon footprints. The apps are Tiktok, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Snapchat.

Carbon footprint or carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from all activities of a person or other entity, including buildings, companies, countries, digital service providers, and others.

Number of Footprints in Social Media Usage

As one of the newest social media, TikTok is the app with the biggest carbon footprint. TikTok emits 2.63 grams of carbon equivalent per minute. This means that if you spend just five minutes a day on the app, you will earn 13g a day and 4.8g a year.

Following TikTok, the second app to leave another highest footprint is Reddit. Reddit leaves emissions of 2.48 grams for every minute. The social news site is currently the 21st most popular site in the world and an estimated 22% of adults aged 18 to 29 in the US use it.

Pinterest completes the top three most polluting social media sites with CO2 equivalent emissions of 1.3 grams per minute. Pinterest is an image-sharing site that lets users get inspired on everything from fashion to DIY.

“Social media is deeply integrated into our daily lives,” says Brett Mifsud, general manager of energy at Compare the Market.

He also said in a statement that what most people don't realize is the extent of the impact our social media habits have on the planet.

Mifsud said in his statement that one person using each of the 10 platforms for five minutes each day would produce 20 kg of carbon per year. That's the same as driving a car for 52.5 miles.

The figure of 20 kg may be an underestimation for many people. But what if the total calculation says otherwise. A rough calculation is like this, based on data from Data Indonesia, active social media users in Indonesia as of January 2022 are 191 million people. If each person uses 10 types of social media for five minutes, it will produce 3.8 billion kg of carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, if calculated worldwide, there are about four billion social media users, the total of the carbon footprint left is 80 billion kg, or the equivalent of 80 million tons of carbon dioxide every year.

The cause?

The reason is that, by using social media, we consume a lot of power on our devices, eventually we have to charge them using electricity. Well, this power plant still uses materials that are not environmentally friendly such as coal, and others.

For example, every time you upload a photo, it will consume an average of 5.12 kWh of electrical energy. Imagine if this number was accumulated from hundreds of millions of Instagram users around the world.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2021, the number of carbon emissions will jump dramatically, which is 4.5 percent from the previous year. Finally, the use of more electricity than usual.

Based on a study from Yale, in the journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling, the study estimates that internet use increased by 40% worldwide following stay-at-home orders from January to March 2020 as the virus spread.

According to research, this surge in online activity is fueling demand for up to 42.6 million megawatt-hours of additional electricity to support data transmission and to power building data centers that house computer network hardware and data, cloud services, and digital applications.