Have you ever wondered about the Internet? From data to usage, have you ever stopped and wondered about this enormous apparatus that has become so imperative to our everyday lives? You probably have, especially as you navigate the World Wide Web to find grainy images of alien spacecraft. There are plenty of compelling facts about the Internet, but we were able to condense it so you can spend the rest of your time playing minesweeper.
Here are 10 interesting facts about the Internet:
Fact #1: Half of the world uses the Internet.
The planet has a population of about seven billion people – and it is only getting higher. How many people have access to the Internet? It is estimated that roughly 3.6 billion access the Internet.
Despite making its way to the public realm a little more than 20 years ago, more than half of the human population has an Internet connection or some form of connection to the online world. Many households around the world are subscribed to some form of Internet packages that allow them to access the Internet any time.
Fact #2: 23 billion devices are connected to the Internet.
What is just as prevalent as the Internet is the ubiquity of devices.
The experts estimated that there are more than 23 billion devices that are connected to the Internet. When you do the math, this totals roughly three devices for every person. And, remember, these devices are incredible because they can do nearly everything: play music, make telephone calls, send emails, watch motion pictures, and anything else that requires multiple electronic tools years ago.
Fact #3: The average person spends 10 hours per day online.
Today, the average person now spends approximately 10 hours per day online. Yikes! You’re spending half of your time on the Internet. Before you know it, we will have accumulated an entire lifetime of Internet access in a short period of time.
Are we even using our time wisely? Well, hop on a bus and notice the number of people playing Flappy Bird. So, that should answer your question.
Fact #4: There are five billion Google searches every day.
Search engine juggernaut Google says that its website is the home of roughly five billion searches every day. Every day! That is incredible. What makes this even more remarkable is that people would have to go through several different channels to find information. Today, it takes 0.79 seconds to answer a question or find information about anything you want.
Fact #5: There are tens of millions of terabytes of data.
Here is just how immense online data has become:
- There are tens of millions of terabytes of data.
- There are about two billion websites.
- There are five billion webpages.
Despite its vast infrastructure, Google says that it has only indexed a fraction of a percent of all the content published on the Internet. You might be wondering if the Internet will ever run out of space or our data. Well, the Internet is running at maximum capacity, but we keep adding space, so we may not need to worry about it – yet.
Fact #6: There are 43 million new domains per year.
Investing in domains is big business. The guy who bought and sold bitcoin.com made a fortune.
Five thousand domains are registered every hour, totaling about 43 million domains every year. But what is interesting is that 75% of these domains are unresolved, which means that if you have a practical use for theskyisblue.com, then you cannot have it because someone bought it years ago.
So, why are people registering and holding onto these domains? It’s an investment. If something is blowing up or trending, then the domain owner can sell it to someone and make a handsome profit.
Remember, in the early days of the Internet, someone registered news.com and then sold it.
Fact #7: Thousands of websites are hacked every day.
Now, this might seem alarming but don’t panic: Approximately 85,000 websites are hacked every single day. The websites that mostly targeted? Ones that operate under WordPress and Joomla.
This is why it is so critical to invest in digital security to prevent data breaches and infiltrations.
Fact #8: More than 250 billion emails are sent each day.
Rumours of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated. It is still the most popular form of online communication.
Each day, more than 250 billion emails are sent, but nearly all the emails are not sent by humans. Instead, more than four-fifths of all emails are spam, whether it is promoting a product, phishing for information, or ridiculous 419 scams.
Fact #9: Only 49% of Internet traffic is generated by humans.
Did you know that 49 percent of the entire traffic generated on the Internet is done so by humans?
Wait a minute…Isn’t all the traffic created by humans? Not quite. In fact, the remaining 51% is produced by bots and spamming software. What’s more, if these parasites did not feet on the bandwidth, then our Internet connections would be a lot faster. Damn those bots!
Fact #10: There is a lot of pornography on the Internet.
You can read about Ludwig Wittgenstein. You can play a game of chess with someone from Cambodia. You can learn an entirely different language. But what do we instead? Watch and generate pornography – lots and lots of pornography.
Here are some interesting Internet facts and statistics that explain why the pornography industry earns $3,000 per second:
- 80 percent of all images created and uploaded on the Internet are of naked women.
- 12 percent of all websites are porn-related.
- One-third of all downloads are porn-related.
- Sunday is the best day for porn consumption.
One word: yeesh!
And there you have it: some of the most gripping facts about the Internet. You might not be thinking about it too much, considering how ingrained it is in your life. But since you’re here, answer this question: Would you give up the Internet for $1 million? Someone pays you a million bucks, but in exchange you can never use the Internet ever again, whether it is for checking email or streaming Bela Lugosi pictures.
