Meet the Climate Change Activists of TikTok

[rangerrebew]

Meet the Climate Change Activists of TikTok
A crop of eco-creators is bent on educating their followers about the looming global disaster. Can their message translate into action?
 

When Louis Levanti woke up one morning last September, climate change wasn’t on his mind. “I was never huge into researching climate change, but I was aware that it is real.” So when the 24-year-old TikTok creator, who lives with his parents on Long Island, opened his phone and saw something about a clock being unveiled, he wasn’t initially interested. “I rolled my eyes thinking it had something to do with the stock market.”

The Climate Clock, in Union Square in New York City, counts down how much time we have left to act before climate change is irreversible. Levanti, who normally posts videos with topics like “weird food that celebrities like to eat” or “annoying things people do at the gym,” was distressed, and he immediately decided to make a TikTok video about it. “It’s a problem that can’t be ignored,” he said. “Why not responsibly use my big platform to educate people and wake some people up the way I was?”

In the TikTok video, Levanti, superimposed over an image of Earth on fire, says, “Hey, stop scrolling. Our planet is bleep dying.” It’s gotten over 314,000 views and been shared nearly 14,000 times. There are over 5,000 comments, some of which are heartbreaking: “I am 13, does that mean my future children will suffer.” “It’s sad that younger people have to suffer because of this.”

https://www.wired.com/story/climate-change-tiktok-science-communication/