Bench Talk

Soul Circuitry: The ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Internet

If the invention of the transistor paved the way for the Information Age, then the invention of the Internet gave way to the “Information Saturation Age.” Researchers estimate that in 2024, the world creates, copies, or consumes 147 zettabytes of data daily.^[1] A zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes, putting it firmly into the category of numbers too big to comprehend.

All this to say, we upload, download, stream, and share an incomprehensible amount of data every day. A study from 2008, before everyone had smartphones, estimated that Americans individually consume 34GB of data every day from television, surfing the web, radio, and everything else we see during the day like billboards and flyers.^[2] The researchers noted a 5.4 percent annual increase in data consumption every year from 1980 to 2008. The first iPhone launched in 2007, and there’s no doubt our information consumption has skyrocketed past the 2008 numbers, now that we all carry supercomputers in our pockets. 

Needles in the Zettabyte Stacks

The sheer volume of information available creates a paralysis by analysis for us. There’s more web than anyone could surf in a lifetime, so the biggest names on the Internet provide value by curating our online experience. Rather than experiencing an unfiltered firehose of content, social media sites and search engines tailor the content we see to our interests. While YouTube hosts many videos about competitive bowling, their algorithm knows that I’m more likely to watch videos of my favorite musicians, so YouTube keeps my feed free of competitive bowling as well as the thousands of other topics I have not shown interest in.

The automatic curation of our online experiences is like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book. Every time we interact with a piece of content, we are deciding how we want the rest of our online experiences to be. Got curious about competitive bowling and looked it up after reading it here? The algorithms are happy to continue satisfying your curiosity in your new interest.

The downside of our hyper-personalized online experience is we no longer have a shared online reality. We used to log into the same websites and see the same viral content, and before that people would gather around the TV to watch one of a handful of national news channels report on breaking stories. Now, every action we take online is carefully filed away so that our attention-hungry apps and sites can learn how to make themselves as appetizing as possible for us. Staying informed on topics outside our bubbles (like competitive bowling) becomes increasingly difficult as algorithms steer us toward content with a proven track record of keeping us engaged, rather than exposing us to new topics and perspectives.

This phenomenon of only being exposed to content similar to what we usually consume is called a filter bubble. When the sites and apps we browse filter out content that they deem irrelevant to our interests, we end up in a personalized bubble where competitive bowling does not exist. I’ll stop picking on competitive bowlers and give a real-world example. Have you seen The Night Agent? It had the most streamed hours of any show on Netflix for the first half of 2023, much to the surprise of myself, my social bubble, and many talking heads online who haven’t even heard of the show.^[3] The sheer volume of content makes it nearly impossible for any piece to go viral beyond its own bubble (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Online experiences have become carefully curated displays of our interests, potentially leaving out unknown worlds of intriguing subjects. (Source: Mariia / stock.adobe.com)

Content Consumption is a Two-Way Street

As we view content, the algorithms catalog us. To see for yourself, you can actually download your information from Google or Meta. I requested my Instagram data from Meta and received a zipped folder containing dozens of neatly organized subfolders. Within these folders, I found every post I’ve viewed, every message I’ve sent or received, and even lists of posts and profiles that I’ve indicated I’m not interested in.

Growing awareness about how much of our data is out there has fueled interest in data privacy. For example, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature in the iOS 14.5 update made headlines in 2021 by setting a new precedent where apps had to ask users to opt in to having their data tracked. Analysis on the backend estimates that only about a quarter of global iOS users opt into data tracking.^[4]

Apple’s App Tracking Transparency follows in the footsteps of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, which introduced a broad range of data privacy and transparency provisions when it became effective in 2018. Today, most websites will ask for your cookie preferences to comply with GDPR. The data collection gold rush is maturing into a transactional system where consumers are getting more input in what data is collected and how it’s used.

Bursting Your Filter Bubble

To sort the exponentially increasing library of online content for us, algorithms look at our past browsing, compare us to similar users, and deliver relevant content. While it’s helpful to have our online experience curated to filter out the noise, too much curation can lead to each of us having a hyper-individualized online bubble, siloing our knowledge and perspectives of the world.

There’s no denying the benefit of having an all-you-can-eat information buffet at our fingertips, but it’s important to maintain a healthy information diet. Make sure to leave room on your plate for informative and thought-provoking content, and don’t be afraid to explore outside your usual palate. Maybe you’ll discover a hidden passion for competitive bowling.

Sources

[1] Taylor, Petroc. “Volume of data/information created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide from 2010 to 2020, with forecasts from 2021 to 2025,” November 16, 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/
[2] Bohn, Roger E, and James Short. “Measuring Consumer Information,” January 2012. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287511578_Measuring_Consumer_Information.
[3] Vega, Nicolas. “These are Netflix’s 10 most popular shows of 2023—‘Wednesday’ was No. 4,” December 14, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/14/netflixs-10-most-popular-shows-of-2023wednesday-was-no-4.html.
[4] Balasubramanian, Manoj. “App Tracking Transparency Opt-In Rate – Monthly Updates,” May 2, 2022. https://www.flurry.com/blog/att-opt-in-rate-monthly-updates/.