TikTok... speeding our way to oblivion

This LinkedIn news story quantifies the energy cost of those pointless videos that are posted on social media and are increasingly being shown on programmes in place of actual news and content produced by journalists...

Perhaps it's time to unplug these sites for the good of everyone. 

We will look back on the pointlessness and wastefulness of such activity in future decades as an environmental crime.

Instagram is also mentioned here.

TikTok consumes vast amounts of energy to power the servers in its data centres, which enable users to upload and watch videos on the app. 

Greenly estimates that TikTok's 2023 emissions across the UK, the US and France were around 7.6m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), meaning its global emissions are likely to be well over 50m metric tonnes of CO2e. Meanwhile, Greece’s carbon emissions for 2023 were 51.7m metric tonnes of CO2e. 

TikTok has over 1 billion users worldwide and its global carbon footprint is likely just above Instagram's, Greenly said. 

While Instagram has almost twice as many users, the average person spends just 30.6 minutes on the platform each day compared to 45.5 minutes on TikTok.