Everyone has a carbon footprint, which is the total amount of greenhouse gases generated by our actions, and the internet offers many carbon footprint calculators that can tell you what emissions you are producing. But now, a new carbon calculator can tell you how much carbon emissions you are emitting while scrolling through your favorite social media websites (via Neowin).You can find the social media carbon calculator on a UK comparison website, Compare the Market. There you will find the most popular social media platforms displayed. To calculate your social media carbon footprint, simply enter the number of minutes you spend each day on each social media platform.
When you click on the “Calculate” button, the calculator will provide your daily and annual carbon emissions from each social platform in gCO₂Eq (grams of CO₂ equivalent). That way, you can see exactly how much your TikTok addiction is costing the planet.
According to Compare the Market, the average emissions per minute for each social media website were measured on a Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone and were sourced from Greenspector. The calculator takes your input for every social media site and multiplies it by the estimated emissions per minute for that platform. To calculate the annual footprint, it simply multiplies the daily number by 365.
On its website, Compare the Market also has a statistic that shows which social media platforms provide the most carbon emissions. It appears that the top three ‘social media sites with the biggest carbon footprints’ are TikTok, Reddit, and Pinterest with 2.63 gCO₂Eq per minute, 2.48 gCO₂Eq per minute and 1.3 gCO₂Eq per minute, respectively.
