By 2017, bank statements and legal notices will arrive as paper almost twice as often as electronic documents. But paperless growth means more and more people will suffer PDF-downloading drudgery. InfoTrends forecasts that 8.6 billion paperless statements will be sent in the United States in 2017. (Credit: InfoTrends) Statements, bills, legal notices, and other official communications are steadily shifting to paperless delivery, but even four years from now paper will still dominate in the United States. So concludes a study announced Thursday by InfoTrends, which surveyed 2,025 consumers and 267 businesses on the matter. The analyst firm forecasts that paperless document deliveries will increase from 4.2 billion in 2012 to 8.6 billion in 2017, but that paper deliveries will drop from 19.5 billion to 15.9 billion over the same period. That means 84 percent more paper statements than paperless in 2017. The steady growth of paperless delivers, though, means more and more people will suffer the PDF-downloading drudgery that currently spoils too much of my life. Related stories Online transfer with one number wrong costs woman $40,000 Why all the requests for paperless billing lately? Ready or not, time to grapple with e-memory CNET News Daily Podcast: Where we go paperless I've found lots of ups and downs to going paperless, but it's clearly the wave of the future for many routine communications. There's a reason the United States Postal Service dropped Saturday deliveries. One of my biggest complaints about my mostly paperless lifestyle, though, is that it can add a lot of work when it's time to fetch those PDFs from your banks, utility companies, schools. With paper statements, it's a matter of opening an envelope that arrives with no effort on your part, then filing some paper in a cabinet. With paperless, you must actively log in to a site and fetch PDFs. Of course, you might conclude your banks can be trusted to supply such documents if you happen to need them later. Personally, I prefer to have my own records and have used them many times for things like establishing residency and managing taxes. For me, all the downloading is a pain. I just counted: I have to download 22 statements and another seven each quarter. Those come from 21 different companies, each with its own username, password, schedule, and sometimes dual-factor authentication doodad. Sure, that's a #firstworldproblem, but the more paperless we become, the more it'll become everybody's problem.
By 2017, bank statements and legal notices will arrive as paper almost twice as often as electronic documents. But paperless growth means more and more people will suffer PDF-downloading drudgery.
InfoTrends forecasts that 8.6 billion paperless statements will be sent in the United States in 2017.
(Credit: InfoTrends)
Statements, bills, legal notices, and other official communications are steadily shifting to paperless delivery, but even four years from now paper will still dominate in the United States.
So concludes a study announced Thursday by InfoTrends, which surveyed 2,025 consumers and 267 businesses on the matter. The analyst firm forecasts that paperless document deliveries will increase from 4.2 billion in 2012 to 8.6 billion in 2017, but that paper deliveries will drop from 19.5 billion to 15.9 billion over the same period.
That means 84 percent more paper statements than paperless in 2017. The steady growth of paperless delivers, though, means more and more people will suffer the PDF-downloading drudgery that currently spoils too much of my life.
Related stories
- Online transfer with one number wrong costs woman $40,000
- Why all the requests for paperless billing lately?
- Ready or not, time to grapple with e-memory
- CNET News Daily Podcast: Where we go paperless
I've found lots of ups and downs to going paperless, but it's clearly the wave of the future for many routine communications. There's a reason the United States Postal Service dropped Saturday deliveries.
One of my biggest complaints about my mostly paperless lifestyle, though, is that it can add a lot of work when it's time to fetch those PDFs from your banks, utility companies, schools.
With paper statements, it's a matter of opening an envelope that arrives with no effort on your part, then filing some paper in a cabinet. With paperless, you must actively log in to a site and fetch PDFs.
Of course, you might conclude your banks can be trusted to supply such documents if you happen to need them later. Personally, I prefer to have my own records and have used them many times for things like establishing residency and managing taxes.
For me, all the downloading is a pain. I just counted: I have to download 22 statements and another seven each quarter. Those come from 21 different companies, each with its own username, password, schedule, and sometimes dual-factor authentication doodad.
Sure, that's a #firstworldproblem, but the more paperless we become, the more it'll become everybody's problem.
