TV makes up nearly half of the data people process per day

By the time you go to sleep tonight, you will have consumed 34GB on information.

Now that headache makes a little more sense, huh?

A news study from the University of California, San Diego has translated our day-to-day activities into computer storage terms. At 34GB per day, that means the average American household consumes 3.6 zettabytes last year. A zettabyte is a million, million gigabytes.

Put another way, if someone were to print 3.6 zettabytes of text in books and stacked them as tightly as possible across the U.S. (including Alaska), the stack would be 7 feet high.

Television was far and away the leader in the study, making up 44.85 percent of the daily information consumption. Computer data was second at 26.97 percent.

Radio holds its own, thanks to the daily commute – contributing 10.59 percent. Recorded music and movies are at the back of the pack, with 1.11 percent and 0.2 percent respectively.

Other bits and pieces from the report (which is available for download here) after the break:

* In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day.

* Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day.

* Hours of information consumption grew at 2.6 percent per year from 1980 to 2008,

* Information consumption in bytes increased at only 5.4 percent per year.