In a recent data usage report released by the University of California, it has been revealed that, an average American internet users consumes about 34 gigabytes of data, inclusive of 100,000 words in a single day. The data for the report is generated from a variety of sources such as television, radio, the internet, text messages and video games.

With this report, come yet another internet terminology, zettabyte which is like the Mt. Everest of data computation. So, keeping zettabyte as a reference point, it comes to light that with 34 gigabytes worth of data attributed to an average American, the total amount of data consumed for the year 2008 comes to the figure of 3.6 zettabytes. 1 zettabyte is computed at 1 trillion bytes and the new metric is equivalent to 5.1 million computer hard drives.

The research data not only reflects upon the amount of data consumed by users across the United States, but also takes into account the time invested by users in each media delivery medium. The results after monitoring all the metric for the research state that, the users put in about 11.8 hours each day on entertainment activities, out of which more than four and a half hours are consumed by television viewing. Next in line is the amount of time spent on the computer, that counts up to two hours of usage, combined of both online and offline storage.

According to Roger Bohn (Professor of Technology Management, University of California),

“Gaming saw the biggest leap in the number of bytes we consume and the amount of time devoted to this platform. Print media has declined consistently, but if you add up the amount of time people spend surfing the Web, they are actually reading more than ever.”

Via New York Times & University of California.