According to a study, social media is also polluting the environment

According to Climate Care's calculations, the Internet's annual energy and carbon footprint is 830 million tons of carbon dioxide, roughly 2 percent of global emissions. This means that it is the same as air travel, but it will soon leave it too, Greendex wrote.

At the beginning of 2023, a total of 5.16 billion people used the Internet, which is 64.4 percent of the total world population. The number of users increased by 100 million in 2022, the rate of growth naturally slowed down.

There are currently only places in the world where people do not have Internet access in South and East Asia and parts of Africa.

Mobile phones also lead the way in internet usage

From a European point of view, it may be surprising, but mobile phones have taken the lead. 92.3 percent of the world's netizens use a phone, and 56.9 percent of global Internet use is done on mobile phones. However, in the wealthier, more developed regions of the world, laptops and desktops still lead in terms of total internet usage time.

A Google search means as much carbon dioxide as driving 15 meters.

Where does this emission come from? First of all, technology companies have to manufacture huge servers, the production of which requires serious resources. (And this does not include the devices, laptops, and phones we use, their significant environmental footprint.)

These servers also need to be operated, for which electricity usually comes from fossil power plants.

An ordinary Google search does not use a single server, in which case the information travels back and forth between the servers and back to our device. According to Climate Care, a single Google search produces between 0.2 and 7 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. And 7 grams of carbon dioxide is approximately as much as a car produces during its 15-meter journey. Emails sent to multiple recipients can produce up to 50 grams of carbon dioxide.

1 Netflix episode = 6 minutes of boiling water.

Of course, how much carbon dioxide emissions correspond to the energy used depends on many things. According to Netflix's own estimate, we produce less than 100 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent by watching a movie for one hour, but it does not specify a more precise value. An independent organization estimates that the European average is 55-56 grams per hour. This roughly corresponds to a 300-meter journey in an average car. This does not seem like a lot, but if you look behind the numbers, it turns out that it is not a little.

Browsing the latest data from Netflix, which restricts password sharing , we can see that two weeks ago, the top 10 content alone was watched for 145,820,000 hours globally.

With a quick calculation, we get that 8,020 tons of carbon dioxide were released into the air in one week through the use of Netflix.

Domination of social media

In parallel with the dominance of telephones, social media also dominates internet usage. In January 2023, nearly 60 percent of the planet's population, 4.76 billion people, used social media.

TikTok is the most polluting app.

According to the Bankless Times, TikTok time generates the most carbon dioxide. One minute on TikTok is equivalent to 2.63 grams of carbon dioxide. This is more than double that of Instagram (1.05 grams), three times that of Facebook (0.79 grams) and five times that of YouTube (0.46 grams).

However, Facebook still leads in absolute numbers, as this network boasts the most daily active users: 1.96 billion. An average user spends 30.1 minutes on the platform every day, which produces a total of 46,797 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Facebook and TikTok produce as much carbon dioxide annually as flying the entire population of London to New York and back.

(Source: marmalade.co.hu; hirado.hu | Image: pixabay.com)