Just by using TikTok, you might be releasing more carbon than Greece does in a whole year!
A recent study found that TikTok users, on average, create more greenhouse gases than the entire country of Greece, equivalent to driving a gasoline-powered car an additional 123 miles per year.
According to an assessment by “Greenly,” a carbon accounting consultancy based in Paris, the annual carbon footprint of TikTok in 2023 across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Paris was about 7.6 million tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which is higher than the emissions of Twitter/X and Snapchat in the same regions.
Currently, TikTok has around 1 billion users worldwide. Greenly’s findings show that TikTok’s carbon emissions are slightly higher than Instagram’s, despite Instagram having twice the user base of TikTok.
The reason for this is likely due to the different usage patterns of both platforms. On TikTok, users spend an average of 45.5 minutes per day, while on Instagram, it’s 30.6 minutes.
This difference in usage time highlights that “addiction still plays a role in motivating people to generate increasingly higher carbon footprints,” explained Alexis Normand, CEO of Greenly.
To put it into perspective, Greece’s carbon emissions in 2023 were 51.67 million metric tons of CO2e. If you compare this to just 15% of TikTok’s global user base, it would account for 50 million metric tons of CO2e, excluding other carbon emissions from TikTok’s operations, like office spaces.
Just 15% of TikTok users can create a carbon footprint equivalent to Greece’s entire national output. According to Greenly’s analysis, TikTok users have the second-highest CO2e emissions per minute of social media use, second only to YouTube. On TikTok, 1 minute of usage burns an average of 2.921 grams of CO2e, while YouTube burns 2.923 grams per minute, and Instagram burns 2.912 grams per minute.
TikTok’s pollution data is among the least transparent of all social media platforms. Tech giants like Meta and Google have disclosed detailed carbon footprint information annually to the Carbon Disclosure Project and published the details on their websites. In contrast, TikTok does not release its pollution data to the public.
However, TikTok has announced its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2023 with a plan called Project Clover, which began in 2023. Currently, TikTok has only created a single renewable energy-powered data center—a €12 billion facility in Norway, fully powered by renewable energy.
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