Here’s How Much Energy We Waste On Cat GIFs and Twitterbooks

Are you sitting comfortably ? Good , because you ’re about to get a good honest-to-goodness - fashioned superman of guilt . The folks at SciShow have put together a video examining how much energy we do in on running the cyberspace , and yup , the number is embarrassingly bombastic .

As the video explains , stretch picture of the great unwashed falling off rooftop ( and , y’know , running the stock market ) hold servers — which use a caboodle of vitality , some 91 billion kilowatt - time of day in the U.S. alone . And bad of all , a bunch of those server are just sit there , unused , waiting for a data request to come in . Cooling those servers — being used or otherwise — is hugely energy inefficient .

SciShow ’s video is a good priming on the topic , but if you want a more in - depth explainer on information centers ( and their shameful inefficiency — running servers only calculate for 11 % or so of the factual big businessman usage),Dan Luu has a more in - depth lookat the topic . Just be ready to feel an overwhelming sense of moral inferiority every time you lumber onto Reddit from now on . [ YouTube ]