The Web Is Not Actually Getting Any More Global

“The Internet is creating a global community,” a thought leader probably said recently. But take a closer look at Internet traffic data, and the theory that the web is turning the world into a borderless digital utopia doesn’t hold up.

There’s no question that Internet traffic in general is skyrocketing. And more of this data crosses borders than ever before. Global flows in a digital age, a report released by McKinsey Global Institute, attempts to quantify the circulation of three major types of “flows”: financial, human, and digital.

Using data from TeleGeography, McKinsey estimates that the total transfer of data across borders has increased 20-fold from 2005 to 2012, from 2.2 trillion megabytes per second to over 41 trillion. This is a dramatic rise, no doubt, but a little context makes it clear that data flow -- or the growth of that flow -- is not inherently international. In fact, cross-border web traffic has barely kept up with the sum total of Internet activity. The vast majority of digital transactions are still domestic.