How Much Data Is Created Every Day in 2023?

Tech users generate a mind-boggling quantity of data daily. Approximately 1.145 trillion MB of data is created every day.

As one study found, each individual produced 1.7 MB of data every second in 2020. This number is higher than it was in previous years. Another way to look at it is that in 2020, the world’s population produced 2.5 quintillions (a million trillion) bytes of data every single day.

The median amount of data exchanged over broadband in the first half of 2020 was 250 GB per user. Analysts predict daily data usage to reach 463 exabytes (an exabyte is 1 million terabytes) by 2025.

Data creation has skyrocketed due to the introduction of internet-enabled smartphones. In 2017, data produced on mobile phones was more than 8 exabytes. Technological innovations have come a long way. Every single person owns a mobile phone and uses data every day.

1) How Fast Is Data Growing?

(Source: NetworkWorld, We Are Social, WeForum, PWC, Statista)

You’d be surprised to know how much data is on the internet. The quantity of information is growing each year and faster than ever. The amount of data will reach 175 zettabytes (a zettabyte is one billion terabytes) by 2025—a growth of 61% from the figures for 2018.

Experts estimate that 90% of data was created in the last two years, considering the exponential growth curve.
In 2019, 4.39 billion people used the internet, which is almost 57% of the world’s population and represents a 9% increase from the previous year. Americans use 4,416,720 GB of internet each second. In 2019, according to PwC, there were 4.4 zettabytes worth of data in the digital universe.

The growth in the number of internet users should give you an idea of this technology’s ubiquity. At the beginning of 2021, there were approximately 4.66 billion internet users across the globe. This number is expected to increase further in the coming years, as more and more people gain access to the web.

2) Social Media Contribution to Data Growth

(Source: DigitalMarketing, SmartInsights, OmniCore, Facebook )

3.96 billion people used social media, according to research from 2020, with each person spending an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes on various social media platforms every day. 99% of the total social media users access these platforms through their mobile phones, according to Smart Insights.

Have you ever wondered how many photos are uploaded to Facebook each day? Facebook users upload more than 350 million photos a day. That’s about 243,055 photos every minute. This figure excludes the images uploaded to other Facebook-owned social media platforms like Instagram.

Facebook creates 4 petabytes of data each day (a petabyte is a thousand terabytes). So, how much data does Facebook use per hour? According to a recent report, scrolling for one hour on Facebook uses around 100 MB.

Instagram users generate almost 1 billion posts daily. This social media platform, considered one of the most popular ones of the 21st century, uses around 720 MB per user every hour. More and more people are posting images and videos on Instagram every day. Analysts expect the number of users to grow exponentially in the coming years.

3) Email and Video Contribution to Data Growth

(Source: Statista, Sotrender, TechJury, 99firms)

The amount of data in the world is hard to wrap your head around. Email is one of the most widely used ways of communication nowadays, especially for work. Internet users sent 306.4 billion emails every day, and the number is projected to increase to 320 billion by the end of 2021. According to one report, we’ll reach 361.6 billion emails a day by 2024.

After Facebook, Youtube is the second most popular digital platform in the world. Content creators upload approximately 1,300,000,000 videos to YouTube per minute, which amounts to around 300 hours of content. An average quality video (480p) uses 8.3 MB of data every minute or about 500 MB every hour.

On Twitch, a person can upload five videos in one go and 100 videos in 24 hours. In 2018, users made 3.5 billion Facebook live broadcasts, and this figure quadrupled the following year. More than 40 billion videos and photos have been shared on Instagram since its creation.

4) IoT Data Creation

(Source: IOT, Review42, TechJury, UX Planet)

Now that we’ve highlighted how much data we create every day, let’s talk about IoT data. The internet of things will generate approximately 79 zettabytes by 2025. The adoption of IoT devices is increasing rapidly, and it’s reported that by 2023 there will be 1.3 billion IoT users. Currently, there are 31 billion IoT devices.

Recent reports say that around 40% of the internet data in 2020 was machine-generated—this is data created by a computer without any human input. In the future, the use of machine learning would become even more widespread. As programs and apps get more complicated, the need for machine-generated data processes increases.

2.5 quintillion bytes are produced by humans daily. This means almost 60% of the internet data is created by humans, while the other 40% is machine-generated.

5) Other Data Creation Statistics

(Source: SeoTribunal, Statista, Hootsuite, GadgetsNow)

Google creates more than half of the data in the world. Over 2 trillion Google searches happen each year. This means that every day over 5 billion searches takes place, with 228 million each hour, over 3.8 million per minute, and 63,000 per second.

Although there are other search engines in the market, Google is definitely the market leader with over 90% of the search engine market.

Smart speakers have gained a lot of popularity these days. There was a time when they were the stuff of science fiction movies. Smart speakers use 252 MB every week, which amounts to 1.08 GB per month and 36 MB a day. Almost 90 million people in the US own smart speakers.

There are over two billion video game players in the world. Game publisher EA (Electronic Arts) has 275 million registered users. They create 50 terabytes every day. Video games are increasing in popularity—they generated $20 billion in revenue in the US alone.

Messages sent via SMS don’t use internet data. Even if you don’t have a data plan on your mobile phone, you can still send and receive texts.

Snapchat is another social media platform that has become widely popular in the last decade. Users sent 4 billion snaps every day. Snapchat stories are watched 10 billion times per day. Snapchat reportedly uses 1 MB for every post. This number excludes the usage of any filters, which increase data usage.

There are over 2 billion active Whatsapp users in the world, and this number is constantly increasing. Whatsapp users send 65 billion messages a day. It’s one of the most widely used messaging apps in the world. WhatsApp uses 740 KB every minute for a voice call. The data usage increases with video calling.