- TikTok’s carbon emissions are almost as high as the entire country of Greece, according to a study by carbon accounting consultancy Greenly. But TikTok disputes the findings, saying it doesnt publicize its user numbers.
We know the psychological and physiological effects of doomscrolling on social media are largely negative: headaches, muscle tension, neck and shoulder pain, low appetite, difficulty sleeping, and elevated blood pressure, according to Harvard Medical School.
But doomscrolling has more widespread effects that may not be as obvious. A recent study by carbon accounting consultancy Greenly uncovered the hidden environmental costs of social media, largely being carbon emissions.
“Behind every social media post or video is a vast digital infrastructure, powered by data centres and servers that consume significant amounts of electricity,” including coal, oil, and gas, according to Greenly. “This hidden environmental impact, driven by both companies and their users, has become a growing concern in the context of climate change.”
According to Greenly, TikTok is among the largest culprits of high carbon emissions, mostly due to its video-heavy platform that consumes “significantly more energy” than text- or image-based platforms like X and Facebook. Plus, the average user time on TikTok is 45.8 minutes per day, according to Statista, and TikTok users have the second-highest emissions per minute of use on social media, according to Greenly, second only to YouTube.
“The relationship between doomscrolling and carbon emissions is quite direct,” Abdullah Choudhry, chief impact officer and co-founder at carbon accounting platform Arbor, told Fortune. “Every minute spent on these platforms requires server processing power and data transmission. What many need to realize is that mindless scrolling has a very real environmental cost.”
However, TikTok disputes Greenly’s findings as it doesn’t publicly disclose its user base. TikTok declined to share information about its user base with Fortune. ByteDance’s 2023 total carbon emissions, covering all operations beyond TikTok, are less than 20% of the estimated emissions by Greenly, a TikTok spokesperson said. Each year since 2021, ByteDance completes a carbon footprint assessment aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, including emissions from third-party co-location data centers in all regions where the company operates.
In March 2023, ByteDance announced it had also committed to achieving carbon neutrality in their business operations by 2030.
“Our global data centers play a critical role in helping to provide a creative, user-centric experience across our products and platforms,” according to ByteDance. “We have begun transitioning to renewable energy across our data centers, and today we also commit to source 100 percent of renewable electricity for our global operations by 2030.”
One step toward carbon neutrality was announcing a new data center in Norway that will run on 100% local renewable energy “to align with our long-term aspiration of building a sustainable business,” Theo Bertram, TikTok’s vice president of government relations and public policy forEurope, said in a statement.
Greenly’s findings
To put Greenly’s findings in perspective, one minute spent on TikTok burns 2.921 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), which means TikTok users burn about 133.8 grams of CO₂e per day. Multiply that by the number of days in a year, and that’s a whopping 48,830 grams of CO₂e, or the equivalent of driving an extra 122 miles in a gas-powered car each year. (The average passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.)
And zooming out, TikTok’s CO₂e emissions have gotten so high, they may actually be worse than the entire country of Greece—although, TikTok disagrees.
The U.S., United Kingdom, and France make up just about 15% of TikTok’s global user base (about 156 million), which is estimated at a total of 1 billion global users. Greenly estimates TikTok emits about 7.6 metric tons of CO₂e in just the U.S., U.K., and France, which would mean the platform’s overall global carbon footprint is likely about 50 million metric tons of CO₂e. The entire country of Greece in 2022 emitted an estimated 51 million metric tons of CO₂e, according to The International Energy Agency.
“Doomscrolling, or actively seeking out negative news, is just one subcategory of the reasons people scroll TikTok and contribute to its carbon footprint,” Frank Maguire, vice president of insights, strategy, and sustainability at sustainable advertising company, Sharethrough, an Equativ company, told Fortune. “The broader reason for TikTok's massive carbon footprint is a result of how addictive and accurate their algorithm is.”
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, doesn’t publish statistics about its carbon footprint, but Greenly tracked energy consumption data, device-specific consumption data, carbon emissions factors, and user data to inform its study.
As for TikTok’s carbon neutrality pledge, Choudhry is skeptical.
“Based on their current trajectory and single renewable data center in Norway, it seems highly ambitious,” Choudhry said. “Without a clear roadmap for transitioning their massive data center operations to renewable energy, 2030 feels more like a PR target than a realistic goal.”
