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U.S. consumers received an estimated 34 gigabytes of media information per person per average day in 2008, according to researchers Roger Bohn and James E. Short. That historical estimate covers many kinds of media—not just internet traffic—and describes information consumed, not files people downloaded or stored. The authors also measured consumption in hours and words because bytes alone do not show how people experienced information.
What the 34 GB figure means
Bohn and Short’s peer-reviewed article, “Measuring Consumer Information,” estimates the flow of media information received by U.S. consumers in 2008. It includes print and electronic media, and formats such as voice, text, pictures and video. The authors wrote, “We measure information flows, not stocks.” In other words, the estimate concerns information delivered to and consumed by people—not all information created or saved, and not material recorded but never consumed. Read the article in the International Journal of Communication.
So “34 GB per day” should not be read as 34 GB of internet data used by each American, or as a claim about today’s media use. It is a modeled average across the U.S. population for 2008, using byte equivalents to compare different kinds of media. People did not all consume the same amount or have the same media habits.
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The study reports consumption in bytes, words and time. These measures are related, but they are not interchangeable: a video stream can contribute many bytes in a short time, while radio can account for substantial listening time with comparatively few bytes.
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| Measure | 2008 estimate | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Bytes | About 34 GB per person per average day; 3.6 zettabytes across the U.S. population | Digital information consumed, expressed as a volume of data |
| Time | 11.8 hours per person per day; 1.3 trillion hours across the population | Time spent receiving information, not a conversion of the byte estimate |
| Words | About 100,500 words per person per day | An estimated word count; the article’s abstract reports this per-person figure |
The paper’s abstract reports the per-person word estimate and a total of 1,080 trillion words, while a later passage gives a different total. The per-person figure is therefore best treated as the abstract’s estimate rather than reconciled with the inconsistent aggregate wording.
Where people spent their information time
In 2008, television accounted for 41% of information time, radio 19%, and computers 24%. These are shares of time, not shares of bytes. The distinction matters: video’s high bandwidth strongly affects byte totals, while television, radio and computer use rank differently when measured by time or words.
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How the estimate was assembled—and its limits
The authors considered a broad media mix, including newspapers, books, mobile devices, portable computer games, satellite radio and internet video. A summary of the 2009 report says the estimates drew on more than 20 information sources; the journal article is the principal source for the figures and methodology. View the 2009 report summary.
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How consumption changed from 1980 to 2008
Bohn and Short report 9.8 GB per person per day in 1980 and 33.8 GB in 2008 in one discussion of growth, describing an annual increase of 4.4%. Their abstract separately reports byte-measured information consumption growing 5.4% annually over 1980–2008. Those rates refer to distinct calculations in the paper and should not be collapsed into one growth rate. Neither establishes a directly comparable figure for current media use.
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