A Gallup survey released in May found that seven in 10 Americans oppose AI data centers in their local area. They consume vast amounts of electricity and water, occupy huge tracts of land and require constant cooling. The awkward part is that the same list, with a few edits, also describes the modern American lifestyle.
In a way, data centers are the American expectation of abundance poured into concrete. Which raises an uncomfortable question: what if the closest thing to a data center isn't the building down the road, but you? A brief self-diagnosis seems appropriate.
Here are five warning signs that you are, indeed, the human version of a data center: Pew Research Center reported in January 2026 that nine in 10 U.S. adults use the internet daily, including 41 percent who say they are online “almost constantly.” The comparison is obvious: just like most Americans, a data center never logs off. The old phrase “going online” now has the faint charm of “visiting the haberdasher.” We do not go online because we reside there, forwarding calendar invites from the breakfast table, reading restaurant menus by QR code and feeling extremely off-balance with a dying phone battery. Descartes had “I think, therefore I am.” We have: “I am on WhatsApp, therefore I am.” The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said U.S. electricity demand has been rising steadily since 2020 after more than a decade of little change, and it identified data centers as a driver of that growth.
Berkeley Lab’s 2026 update estimated that data centers could account for 11.8 percent of total U.S. electricity use by 2030, with scenarios ranging from 9.5 percent to 15.3 percent. This sounds monstrous until you glance around the average home and count the chargers, routers, screens, speakers, appliances, consoles, heated seats, cooled seats and that one mysterious plug no one dares remove because it may belong to the internet. The American power ethic is simple: the outlet is a human necessity.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency's WaterSense program, the average American uses about 82 gallons of water at home every day. Data centers, too, require substantial amounts of water for cooling. The resemblance between the two characters of sorts isn't just that they both need water (duh); it's that they both assume that water will always be there.
Most of us couldn't tell you how many gallons we used yesterday because we rarely have to think about it. Think about it: does any thought go through your head when you turn on the tap? When you open an app and the not-overheated cloud responds?
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