Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

their bills online than by paper check . . . . But in other areas, consumers seem
reluctant to relinquish paper completely. Just 15 percent of online banking
customers have stopped receiving paper statements from their primary bank,
according to a 2006 survey by JupiterResearch.” 23
From the end of World War II through 1990 – a period that coincides
exactly with the rise of the computer – U.S. consumption of paper grew
dramatically. Even in the last fifteen years, as the Internet has made the
networking of computers seamless, and email and electronic documents have
proliferated, consumption of paper for communications (writing and printing)
has not declined. 24 One late twentieth-century study found that when offices
began using email, paper consumption increased by an average of 40 percent.
“The World Wide Web, far from decreasing paper consumption, served to
increase the amount of printing done at home and in the office,” write Abigail
J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper in their 2002 book, The Myth of the <strong>Paper</strong>less
Office. “With the Web, people could access more information more easily than
before, but though they used digital means to find and retrieve information,
they still preferred to print it out on paper when they wanted to read it.” 25
Between 2000 and 2006, domestic consumption of printing and writing paper
held steady at about 29 million “short tons” per year. Factoring in the
population increase over the same period, this may indicate that paper use has
effectively begun to decline, a trend some experts predict will continue in the
coming decades. But for the moment, worldwide demand for all kinds of paper
is still growing. 26 Print media in particular – books, magazines and newspapers
– are booming in the developing world. 27
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