We all know and love the web — you’re even using it right now. Whether you want a fun fact to impress people with or you’re just the curious type, we’ve got you covered. Here are some interesting, strange and mind-blowing facts about the internet.
Surprisingly, over 93% of people use the internet to send messages, making it the leading online activity. Email, social media, financial services and online shopping follow closely behind.
The Internet as we know it today came about in 1983 when it shifted from the Network Control Protocol to the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Because of this, it’s in its 40s — it can legally drive, drink and run for president of the United States. Truly, this is one of the strangest facts about the internet.
Over the years, many people have speculated how much the web weighs — of all the facts about the internet on this list, this one is our favorite. The first comprehensive analysis came from physicist Russell Seitz in 2006. His logic revolved around ones and zeroes and how they exist because of an electron’s negative charge.
Since electrons have mass, he concluded the internet — which was 5 billion GBs in 2006 — had to weigh two ounces. This is where the infamous “strawberry” fact comes from. However, a 2007 analysis used the bit pattern representing each data packet to make the final calculation.
This new project measured the weight of each bit, and then estimated the size of the web to be 40 billion GBs. Using this method and accounting for data growth since 2007, we can confidently agree the internet weighed 25 millionths of an ounce in 2021.
Although technically most apps and websites sit on servers in data centers around the world, most web traffic flows through underwater cables in the ocean. In fact, more than 95% of international information transfers travel on the seafloor to their destinations.
China has over 1 billion internet users as of 2023. The other top four countries are India, the United States, Indonesia and Brazil — but most have less than half the amount China does.
According to one report, bots produced over 47% of internet traffic in 2022. Humans accounted for about 52%, their lowest activity level in almost a decade. Of all the facts about the internet, this one has to be the most interesting.
As of 2023, people produce 375 Exabytes of internet traffic every single month. To put this number into perspective, one EB is the same as 1 billion GBs. The current growth rate is around 20% annually.
The internet has amassed over 120 Zettabytes of data since its conception decades ago. To put this number into perspective, one ZB equals 120 trillion GBs. If you really want your mind blown, you should know there were only 2 Zettabytes in 2010.
In 2019, around 53% of all internet traffic came from mobile devices, while the rest came from desktops. It’s no surprise, considering phones are one of the best inventions ever made.
When you picture the internet, you probably think of social media scrolling, cat videos and memes. Strangely enough, the top content type on the web is none of the above — it’s email. That’s right, people sent 231,400,000 emails in 2022, beating out texts, crypto purchases, snaps and Tinder swipes for the highest content volume.
In 2023, people added 1 billion GB of data to the web every single day. This figure counts posts, shares and reposts. Go ahead — make the number bigger by sharing this with your friends.
Over 55% of websites use English as their primary language. As you may have noticed, ReHack is part of the percentage. The runner-up language is Spanish, but it’s not even close — it accounts for a whopping 5% of websites.
Roughly 34% of internet users are 25-34 years old. People aged 18-24 come in second at nearly 23% and those aged 35-44 make up 18% of the total. This is one of the more interesting facts about the internet, considering your actions can change it.
Delaware’s average download speed is 145 Mbps, making it the state with the fastest internet.
Virginia — and West Virginia, technically — share an average download speed of only 60 Mbps, making them the states with the slowest internet.
You can get millions of Google search results in milliseconds, so they obviously have a ton of websites indexed. If you’re wondering exactly how many, you’re in luck. Its search index contains 100 million GBs of data roughly.
One cybersecurity magazine estimates ransomware attacks occurred every 11 seconds in 2021.
In the United States, around 85% of people go online daily. Out of that group, 31% say they practically never go offline and 48% use the internet multiple times. Ironically, this is one of the few facts about the internet you technically contribute to — you’re even doing it right now by reading this.
Romania’s average internet speed is 232 Mbps as of 2023, making it the fastest country in the entire world. It’s not a huge leap compared to Switzerland’s 229 Mbps and Denmark’s 227 Mbps, but it still secures the win by a fair margin.
A top-level domain is the characters that come after the domain name and the dot. The most popular by far is “.com” as of 2023, since nearly half of all websites use it. The “.org” TLD is technically in second place, but it only accounts for roughly 5% of the total.
The deep web and the dark web — content search engines don’t index — account for up to 95% of the internet, meaning the average person technically only has access to 10% of the web. This includes things like confidential, company or school websites.
As of 2023, there are over 15 billion internet-connected devices in the world. Some experts believe the number will reach 25 billion within the next decade. This is one of the more disturbing facts about the internet if we’re being honest.
In 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received over 800,900 complaints about cybercrime. The losses totaled over $10 billion, a 50% increase from the previous year.
A 2015 study found nearly 60% of the dark web’s websites contain illegal content. While plenty of tech-savvy internet users know how to browse it without a care in the world, it’s still a pretty illicit place. This is relatively tame compared to other facts about the internet, but seeing the number sheds some light on the concept.
In 2021, almost 40% of internet users used ad blockers. We don’t exactly blame them — do you know how infuriating pre-roll ads on YouTube are?
The internet is constantly changing, growing and gaining content. Nobody could’ve predicted things like 5G or mobile usage when it first came into existence, so watching it evolve is super interesting.
