11 Facts About the Internet

Where would we be without wifi? If you are old enough to remember a time before Internet (I am) you may remember what it was like to have to write down car directions from a friend over the phone, search the yellow pages for a business or stand in line at the box office for concert tickets. In the connected world we live in now, we have endless information and services right at our fingertips. When the pandemic shut the world down all many people had was the Internet. One of the surprising Internet facts that many overlook is that, 4.4 billion people still live without Internet access, mostly in developing countries, that makes up about 56% of the world’s population. See more facts about the Internet below:

11 Internet Facts

1. 1. The Internet was invented in a Beer Garden in Silicon Valley. (source) A small group of scientists set up a computer terminal and over beers, conducted an experiment to prove their idea of the ‘Internet’ could become a reality.

2. 2. 85% of Americans say they use the Internet on a daily basis. (source) 31% of those same Americans report being online almost constantly throughout the day and 48% say they go online several times a day. Only 6% report they go online about once a day.

3. 3. The term ‘surfing the web’ was coined by librarian Jean Armour Polly (aka net mom) in upstate NY. (source)

4. 4. Johns Creek, Georgia is the only city in the entire US where 100% of households have Internet access. (source) Harlingen, Texas has the worst Internet access percentage per household in the US at 30.20%.

5. 5. China has the most Internet users in the world with 854 million people online. (source) The 2nd most users is India with 560 million, and the United States with 313.32 million.

6. 6. There are more 1.8 billion websites on the Internet. (and that number is growing every second!) (source)

7. 7. As of 2022 there are currently 5.03 billion people that use the internet. (source)

8. 8. In 2008, China became the first country to name internet addiction as a medical disorder. (source) China now has many schools, programs and bootcamps dedicated to breaking this addiction they have coined as ‘electronic heroin’.

9. 9. On average people spend a total of almost 7 hours a day connected to the internet. (source) South Africans spend the most time online per day over ten hours and people from Japan spend the least hours online daily, near 4.5 a day.

10. 10. The most popular domain extension on the internet is .com. (source) it has 159,902,632 active domains followed by .de with 16,141,315 active domains.

11. 11. In 1972, the first registered domains were created. (source) Although these did not resemble the website addresses we know of today but rather a string of numbers like an IP address.

This page has been updated to include more facts.