December 9, 2009

How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers

This report was written by Roger E. Bohn, Global Information Industry Center, University of California, San Diego, and James E. Short, Global Information Industry Center, University of California, San Diego. They write that in 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. "Information" is defined as flows of data delivered to people and measured by bytes, words, and hours of consumer information. If hours or words are used as the measurement, information sources are more widely distributed, with substantial amounts from radio, Internet browsing, and others. Two previous studies, by Peter Lyman and Hal Varian in 2000 and 2003, analyzed the quantity of original content created, rather than what was consumed. A more recent study measured consumption and found that hours of information consumption grew at 2.6 percent per year from 1980 to 2008, due to a combination of population growth and increasing hours per capita. More surprising is that information consumption in bytes increased at only 5.4 percent per year. The traditional media of radio and TV still dominate the consumption per day, but computers have had major effects on some aspects of information consumption. The purpose of this article is to evaluate how the general population is receiving information and how much is consumed.