As the temperature heats up so does the number of insults flung across the internet.
Billions of tweets were analyzed with AI technology on Twitter which revealed hate speech increased when the temperatures move to an uncomfortable range above 70°F or below 54°F.
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Insults about people’s religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, or gender increased more 22% when temperatures spiked compared to a 12% increase in colder weather.
Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found the sweet spot seems to be from 59-65°F for the least amount of detrimental comments throughout the USA.
The authors used 75 million English phrased hate tweets in a data set consisting of more than 4 billion tweets posted on Twitter in the USA between 2014 and 2020.
This points to the limits of human resilience to extreme temperatures and sheds light on a previously underestimated societal impact of climate change: conflicts in the digital world, affecting both societal cohesion and individual mental health.
Leonie Wenz, working group leader at the Potsdam Institute who led the study, explains: “Now, with ongoing climate change, it is more important than ever. Our results highlight online hate speech as a new impact channel through which climate change can affect overall societal cohesion and people’s mental health. So that means that curbing emissions very rapidly and drastically will not only benefit the outer world. Protecting our climate from excessive global warming is also critical to our mental health.”