It is known that every action we take in our lives harms nature in some way. Moreover, these actions include sending a message via WhatsApp or sharing a post on Facebook. A post on social media today brought up the impact of our posts on the platforms on nature.
Climate and Natural Scientist Prof. from Boğaziçi University. Dr. Levent Kurmaz, in his post on Twitter that the internet is the new agenda, claimed that data transfers cause more harm to nature than we expected. According to Kurnaz, every 10 MB file we send via WhatsApp causes about 200 grams of carbon dioxide emissions to the nature.
Levent Kurnaz’s sharing on the agenda:
Kurnaz’s post garnered many positive or negative reactions:
Are these ratios correct?
Levent Kurnaz’s claim that the videos we send over WhatsApp and all kinds of sharing cause carbon dioxide emissions is completely true. However, this damage is not as large as Kurnaz stated. While the odds are a bit of an exaggeration, that doesn’t mean that every single one of our actions on the internet doesn’t cause carbon dioxide emissions. By the way; The actual rates are actually at an alarming level.
So how much carbon dioxide do we actually emit?
One of the most up-to-date answers on this subject was given in a report published by Greenspector in October 2021. Greenspector took the 10 most popular social media platforms and showed the carbon dioxide effects of these applications. The average carbon dioxide emission per minute of these 10 applications, which we used for an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes every day, was measured as 1.15 gEqCO2. This level was equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions caused by a light vehicle on a 1.4 kilometer road.
When we set off with the same rate, each person using social media causes an average of 165.6 gEqCO2 emissions per day, that is, the effect of a light vehicle traveling 14 kilometers. The annual number corresponds to 60 kgEqCO2 (535 kilometers in a light vehicle).
- Note: These accounts are based on per minute spent streaming, not per share.
According to the same report, the social media platforms that cause the highest carbon dioxide emissions per minute (EqCO2) and the amount of data exchange per minute are as follows:
- TikTok: 2.63g – 96.23MB
- Reddit: 2.48g – 100MB
- Pinterest: 1.30 g – 40.65 MB
- Instagram: 1.05g – 32.46MB
- Snapchat: 0.87g – 17.26MB
- Facebook: 0.79g – 11.15MB
- LinkedIn: 0.71g – 15.34MB
- Twitter: 0.60g – 6.28MB
- Twitch: 0.55g – 6.87MB
- YouTube: 0.46g – 3.09MB
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