Family Life

12.10.09 | FL News Team

American households are absorbing information at an astronomical rate. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have unveiled the 2009 Report on American Consumers. That report says last year, Americans consumed a collective three-point-six zettabytes of information. That's the equivalent of the amount of information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire U.S. including Alaska. Information was absorbed for everything from searching for movies to downloading and watching them; talking on cell phones to reading newspapers. Boiled down to individual figures the report says the average American on an average day sees or hears 34 gigabytes of non-work related information.

 Not all of the information is gleaned from electronic devices. The three-point-six zettabytes of information bombarding households during the year is roughly 20 times more than what can be stored at a single time on all the hard drives in the world. Less than two-percent of the total amount is being transmitted via the Internet. The entire report is available online on the U.C. San Diego Website at UCSD.edu.