The Earthquake Internet Actually Works

In the decade I have lived in California, I’ve learned to be on edge for “The Big One”—an earthquake so powerful, it can bring down houses. The roughly 10 or so tremors I have actually experienced haven’t been like that. Mostly, the shakes are big enough to jolt me upright but small enough to leave me doubting: Was that what I thought it was?

Today, tens of millions of East Coasters got to experience that feeling firsthand when a magnitude 4.8 quake hit just outside Tewksbury, New Jersey, some 50 miles west of New York City. The rumbling was felt from Maine down to Philadelphia, sending books tumbling off shelves and cellphones blaring with emergency alerts warning about possible aftershocks. So far, the physical damage appears to be minimal. (“New Yorkers should go about their normal day,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a press conference.)

By now, I’m fully accustomed to the specific pageantry that accompanies these tiny quakes: First you feel it, then you Google it, and then you post about it. The internet does not often work as well as most of us would like; it is riddled with all kinds of problems from the inconvenient (clunked-up search) to the outright dangerous (political disinformation). But the earthquake internet works tremendously well. Almost instantly, you can easily find information about whether that rattling was a quake and, if so, basic details such as the epicenter and magnitude.

The United States Geological Survey reported today’s quake within five minutes, a geophysicist for the organization told me. (On the West Coast, where earthquake-detection mechanisms are more common, a second system can send push alerts in mere seconds.) And within 20 minutes of the quake today, the USGS website already had a map of how intense the quake felt in 2,500 different locations, presumably culled in part from submissions. Of course, most people probably aren’t checking a government website right after an earthquake. Google takes this info and puts it in its standard red alert box, so even a basic search like earthquake will probably tell you what you need to know. (Earthquake nj and nyc earthquake have been the top trending searches in the U.S. today, a Google spokesperson told me.)

That earthquakes have been efficiently optimized for the web is especially useful for managing bigger earthquakes that are real emergencies. But a tiny earthquake—when the damage is minimal, if not nonexistent—can also provide a rare communal touchpoint when any sort of shared reality is harder to come by. In moments like these, people can set aside their differences and instead focus on the important question: Did you feel that? Today’s earthquake set off a slew of chatter on social media, making X feel more like the Twitter of the old days. Workdays were interrupted as people paused to consider the ground beneath them—usually ignored, until it’s not. Many Americans took the opportunity to commiserate and come together after a stressful 30 seconds of rumbling.

Like the Earth, sometimes we all just need to blow off some steam.