The impact of digital technology in communication is nothing short of phenomenal. Our capacity to generate and broadcast information has increased manyfold. The Internet has become the new Alexandria library. In 2020 it was estimated that there were 44 zettabytes of data on the Internet, that is 44,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. And the projection is that by 2025 there will be 175 zettabytes, as we are currently adding 463 exabytes (463,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) daily!
To illustrate the enormity of these figures: in 2020 it was estimated that more than 500 hours of video were uploaded every minute; this adds up to 720,000 hours daily. It would take a whole life (82.2 years) to watch (24/7) what is uploaded in a single day. Yet, more than a billion hours of content is consumed on YouTube daily!
For better or worse, nowadays, we depend on screens to communicate.
Like many things, in the beginning the Internet started small. In the 1990s, there very few countries with regular Internet users (that is, people that had used the Internet “in the last three months”). But by 2010 it was already a global phenomenon with over a billion regular users.
Source: Our World in Data
Follow the progression of the twenty top user countries to witness the shift in use from Western to Eastern countries and the upsurge in users.
Source: Our World in Data
The arrival of social networks and social media sites have turned the Internet into a major relational environment. At beginning they seem just a complementary way to interact. Now they have become the primary medium for interacting with other people. Therefore, we depend on these networks to communicate, learn, reach out, share, convince, flirt, work, entertain, relax, and engage in virtually any activity one could imagine, good or bad.
This is the reason why the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs; measured in millions) has seen such enormous global growth.
Source: Statista
The number of users is not the only thing that has risen, it is also the amount of time that we spent using social media. As the number of available social media applications have grown, we have devoted more and more time to use them. (Measured in minutes spent daily on social networks).
Source: Statista
Mobile phones, especially smartphones, have been the decisive intermediary that brought the internet into every aspect of our daily lives. Furthermore, social media boosted the growth in the number of mobile phones. It is safe to say that, at this point, there are more mobiles phones than people on the planet. (Measured in mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people).
Source: Our World in Data
Image: by Freepik at Flaticon
The advancement of mobile phone subscriptions has also been spread unevenly. In 1980 only Finland seemed to have them but now cell phone ownership is not only a truly global phenomenon, but also, in some countries, many people have more than one phone. (Mobile cell subscriptions per 100 people by country).
Source: Our World in Data
Not all of the data represented thus far has been generated by human interaction. The truth is that roughly half of all web traffic is generated by bots. Between 40 and 50% of web traffic is generated by applications running automated tasks.
Some of these bots are considered to be “good” as they perform tasks we all benefit from, like search engine bots. But there also are “bad bots” designed to scam or extort us.
Source: 2022 Imperva Bad Bot Report
The disturbing thing is that these bots are becoming more and more sophisticated. It is estimated today that two thirds of bots are designed to be elusive -- simple bad bots are easier to identify and eliminate.
Source: 2022 Imperva Bad Bot Report
The impact of this malicious activity is uneven across different economic sectors, and it may come to no surprise to see sports at the top of the list given the level of corruption in some professional sports. Similarly, gambling sites are notorious for malware and bad bots. We can take some comfort in finding education at the bottom of this ranking.
Source: 2022 Imperva Bad Bot Report
One serious effect of all this malicious web activity has been the propagation of fake news. It is hard to deny that there has been misinformation for as long as can be remembered, but the internet and digital technology have allowed misdirection to take a quantum leap. One striking example was the 2016 US presidential campaign where a massive number of tailored messages were sent to specifically targeted voters. After this practice was exposed, a majority of US voters (from different age groups) grew concerned about the influence of fake news in that election.
Source: Statista
Image: by Freepik at Flaticon
Trust has become the new currency in communication. The paradox is that, while traditional media is struggling today, they still are far more trusted than social media. This means that we spend more and more time using a medium we trust less and less – truly postnormal.
Source: Statista
If we examine the primary ways people verify the information they receive, it might be concluded that we have a long way to go to mediate and manage digital communication. A survey by Video Advertising Bureau of a sample of more than 1,000 people from different countries suggests why the bad bots and fake news are so successful.
Source: Video Advertising Bureau
Our biggest communication challenge may boil down to the fact that, as a society, we are immature in our use of digital communications. We have a very powerful set of tools, and we are still trying to figure out how to use them correctly.
This is the essence of the postnormal condition. Digital is the foundation of the new communication paradigm but, unfortunately, we are still trying to cope with it using the categories of the old communication paradigm.
