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How Much Data is Generated Each Day?
You’ve probably heard of kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, or even terabytes.
These data units are common everyday amounts that the average person may run into. Units this size may be big enough to quantify the amount of data sent in an email attachment, or the data stored on a hard drive, for example.
In the coming years, however, these common units will begin to seem more quaint – that’s because the entire digital universe is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by 2020.
If this number is correct, it will mean there are 40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe.
A Crash Course in Data
Today’s infographic gives us a picture of this new data reality.
Before we get to how much data is created each day – both now, and in the future – it’s worth getting acquainted with how data scales in terms of units.
| Abbreviation |
Unit |
Size (in bytes) |
| b |
bit |
1/8 of a byte |
| B |
bytes |
1 byte |
| KB |
kilobytes |
1,000 bytes |
| MB |
megabyte |
1,000,000 bytes |
| GB |
gigabyte |
1,000,000,000 bytes |
| TB |
terabyte |
1,000,000,000,000 bytes |
| PB |
petabyte |
1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes |
| EB |
exabyte |
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes |
| ZB |
zettabyte |
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes |
| YB |
yottabyte |
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes |
There’s no doubt that data literacy will only become more important in the future, so make sure you know your zettabytes from your yottabytes!
A Day of Data
How much data is generated in a day – and what could this look like as we enter an even more data-driven future?
Here are some key daily statistics highlighted in the infographic:
- 500 million tweets are sent
- 294 billion emails are sent
- 4 petabytes of data are created on Facebook
- 4 terabytes of data are created from each connected car
- 65 billion messages are sent on WhatsApp
- 5 billion searches are made
By 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day!
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