63+ Mind-Blowing Internet Statistics and Trends in 2024

Fact-checked

The internet has become such a vital part of our lives that it’s now considered a basic need. Can you even go to the bathroom without a phone?

Having access to so much knowledge at the tip of your fingers is a precedent in human history. However, it’s surprising how rarely we think about the sheer scope of this phenomenon.

Let’s remind ourselves how special the internet is. And what better way to do so but with awesome internet statistics!

Cool Facts

Here are some of the most mindblowing stats about the internet:

Historical Trivia

How did this internet thing even come to be? We took our time machine for a spin and here’s what we found.

1. In 1965, two computers communicated with each other for the first time ever.,

(Source: Live Science)

The experiment took place at the MIT Lincoln Lab. It was a revolutionary idea and would provide the world with a more effective communication system than the telephone or the telegraph.

2. In 1969, internet’s predecessor, ARPANET, was created.

(Source: Britannica)

Advanced Research Projects Agency Network was funded by the US Defence Department as a way to link government research institutions over telephone lines.

3. 1971 was the year when the first email was sent.

(Source: Life Hacks)

The US programmer Ray Tomlinson sent it. He doesn’t remember what he wrote, but has shared the test messages were “entirely forgettable.”

4. In 1976, Queen Elizabeth II sent her first email.

(Source: Live Science)

On the 26th of March, the Queen partook in a demonstration of the technology.

5. In 1991, the world’s first website went live. It’s still online!

(Source: Live Science)

Feel free to visit it – info.cern.ch. If only its creator, Tim Berners-Lee, could have imagined the worldwide sensation the internet would become and the amazing statistics we observe today!

Fascinating Internet Statistics

Let’s go over the most fascinating internet trends and stats for 2019!

6. Currently, there are 4.39 billion active internet users.

(Source: We Are Social)

The huge number of users in 2019 is one of the most significant internet statistics you can find. Considering the population of Earth is 7.5 billion, that means that 57% of humanity is online! This percentage has been consistently growing and shows no signs of slowing down.

7. Almost 60% of households have internet access.

(Source: ITU)

For comparison, in 2015 this percentage was less than 20%. In developing countries, internet access has increased from 8.4% to nearly 50%.

8. In 2016, internet marketing resulted in sales amounting to $2 trillion.

(Source: Vox)

2017 was the first year when internet ad costs ($205 billion) exceeded television ad budgets ($192 billion).

9. The internet was officially recognized in the USA Today’s list as one of the New Seven Wonders.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Not so much a stat as a fact, but it’s fascinating nevertheless. Other Wonders on the list include the Grand Canyon and the Old City of Jerusalem.

10. In 2019, almost 2 billion people in the world will purchase something online.

(Source: Statista)

Whether we decide to shop on the internet because of convenience or because of better prices, the online marketing trends show an undeniable and consistent growth.

11. Google processes over 5 billion searches daily.

(Source: Serpwatch)

When Google went live in 1998, it handled an average of just 10,000 queries a day.

12. 3.48 billion people are on social media.

(Source: We Are Social)

That’s 45% of the Earth’s population! You don’t really need to see the statistics to know that internet addiction is a real threat. Still, you can find some figures on the topic below.

13. More than 5 million blogs are published every day.

(Source: Internet Live Stats)

That comes up to over 2 billion blogs per year!

You get it, the internet is huge! By now, the information online is so unimaginably vast that you can easily lose perspective. To help with that, we suggest checking out this awesome visualization of some interesting internet statistics.

So is this pool of data going to continue growing? Let’s check out the trends.

Web Growth

It’s pretty obvious the internet is constantly growing. However, let’s get specific about it and take a look at some facts.

Worldwide Internet Growth Statistics

Which continent has the biggest increase in web users? What is the fastest-growing segment online? Time to answer these questions and more!

14. Africa is the indisputable leader in growth.

(Source: ITU)

The percentage of people using the internet rose to 24.4% in 2018, compared to 2.1% in 2005.

15. Europe and the Americas experienced almost no growth due to the high percentage of people already online.

(Source: ITU)

69.9% of the population in South and North America use the internet. Europe boasts an even more staggering 79.6%!

16. In the CIS region 71.3% of people are online, in the Arab States this percentage is 54.7% and in the Asia-Pacific region – 47%.

(Source: ITU)

CIS is also known as the Commonwealth of Independent States – an alliance of 12 former Soviet Union republics.

17. Active mobile-broadband subscriptions have increased from 4.0 per 100 people in 2007 to 69.3 per 100 in 2018.

(Source: ITU)

The total number was 268 million in 2007 and became 5.3 billion in 2018!

18. Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing much faster in the least developed countries.

(Source: ITU)

Penetration rates went from virtually none in 2007 to 28.4 per 100 inhabitants in 2018. Mobile internet statistics indicate that there are 61 users per 100 people in developing countries.

19. The fastest growing segment is social media.

(Source: We Are Social)

Currently there are about 3.3 billion mobile social users and more than 11 people subscribe every second. That’s 1 million new users every day!

20. In Europe, the annual digital growth rate for 2018-2019 was 7.6%.

(Source: We Are Social)

That’s 51 million users more than previous years.

21. Global e-commerce sales in 2019 are predicted to reach $3.45 billion!

(Source: ClickZ)

For comparison, last year’s expected growth was $2.8 billion.

Website and Browser Stats

Websites and browsers are the foundation of the internet, so we’ve dug up some cool facts about it.

Website and Domain Stats

Let’s first focus on the domain and website stats!

22. As of September 2019, there are over 1.7 billion websites online!

(Source: Internet Live Stats)

However, “only” about 200 million are active. The total number reached a billion 5 years ago, in September 2014.

23. Every year, 43 million domain names are registered.

(Source: VeriSign)

To put that into perspective, that’s 5000 domain names per hour. However, over 75% of them remain unused.

24. In the first quarter of 2019, there was an increase of 0.9% top-level domain registration (TLD) compared to the last quarter of 2018.

(Source: VeriSign)

There were 351.8 million TLD domain registrations in 2019’s first quarter. The yearly growth of domain registrations is 5.4%.

25. As for ccTLD (country-code top-level domain) registration, there was a growth of 1.6% in the first quarter of 2019 compared to the last of 2018.

(Source: VeriSign)

In 2019’s first quarter, 156.8 million ccTLDs were registered. That’s a 7.2% year-on-year growth.

26. The most popular TLD is .com.

(Source: Statista)

Actually, as of June 2019, 46.7% of all registered domains are .com.

27. The combined yearly increase of .com and .net registrations is 4.4%.

(Source: Statista)

For 2019, this amounts to 6.5 million new domains, compared to 2018.

28. There are a total of 156.1 million .com and .net domain registrations.

(Source: VeriSign)

That’s a 1.2% increase in 2019’s first quarter compared to 2018’s last.

Browser Stats

You can probably guess what the most popular browser is. But do you know how it came to that? Let’s jump back to the start of the internet era and see how online surfing has changed!

29. In 2002, Internet Explorer was the most popular browser with 86.7% of users preferring it.

(Source: W3Schools)

The other options on the market were AOL and Netscape.

30. In 2003, Mozilla Firefox and Opera pushed out AOL from the list of browsers.

(Sources: W3Schools, Wikipedia, Wikipedia)

Mozilla was initially released in 2002 and Opera – in 1995. While Opera still remains relatively unpopular, Mozilla reached its peak in July 2009 when 47.9% of users preferred it.

31. Google Chrome hit the market on the 2nd of September, 2008.

(Sources: Wikipedia, W3Schools)

The same year was dominated by Internet Explorer and Firefox – each used by roughly half of the online surfers.

32. In 2009, Internet Explorer users started migrating to Chrome.

(Source: W3Schools)

By December 2010, 22.4% of the internet population preferred Chrome and 27.55% – Internet Explorer.

33. 2010 was also the year Mozilla Firefox began losing customers to Chrome.

(Source: W3Schools)

In 2013, 55.8% of users chose Chrome, 26.8% – Mozilla and only 9% stuck with Internet Explorer.

34. Microsoft attempted to get back to its former glory in 2015 by introducing Edge.

(Sources: Wikipedia, W3Schools)

However, the browser is still unpopular – its peak was in January 2016 when just 6.2% of people used it.

35. Nowadays, Chrome dominates the market. Here’s what browser usage stats look like for August 2019:

(Source: W3Schools)

  • Chrome – 81.4%
  • Mozilla Firefox – 9.2%
  • Edge/Internet Explorer – 3.3%
  • Safari – 2.8%
  • Opera – 1.7%

Internet Traffic Statistics

Looking for some interesting stats on internet traffic? We’ve got you covered!

36. Most internet traffic isn’t generated by humans!

(Sources: The Atlantic, PCWorld)

Bots are responsible for 52% of all internet traffic. These are both legitimate search-engine crawlers, as well as malicious bots that mimic human activity to generate fake traffic.

37. The most popular CMS (content management system) is WordPress.

(Sources: WebsiteSetup, wpbeginner)

It hosts popular websites like The New York Times, BBC America, MTV News, Forbes, and others. It has a 51% market share and over 27 million active sites.

38. Excluding the inappropriate ones, the most visited websites worldwide are:

(Sources: Lifewire, TechTarget, Emma Hsu, Wikipedia – Sohu, South China Morning Post, Wikipedia – Taobao)

  • Google – we’re sure you’re familiar with the world’s biggest search engine!
  • YouTube – who hasn’t gotten lost in the related video labyrinth of this media behemoth?
  • Baidu – the Chinese internet search engine.
  • TMall – an online retailer in China, owned by the Alibaba Group.
  • QQ – a messaging app that started out as a copy of ICQ.
  • Sohu – a company that offers games, advertising, and a search engine.
  • Facebook – by now, even your grandparents are familiar with this social media website.
  • Taobao – owned by Alibaba, this is the largest e-commerce website in the world.
  • Wikipedia – it’s the website where you got all your references in school.
  • Yahoo! – most commonly known as an email provider, this website also has a search engine and a buzzing news section.

39. The internet usage statistics indicate the websites generating the most traffic in the US are:

(Source: Ahrefs)

  • YouTube
  • Wikipedia
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Amazon
  • IMDb
  • reddit
  • Pinterest
  • eBay
  • TripAdvisor

40. Blogger is the most popular blogging platform.

(Sources: BroadbandSearch, Sysomos)

It has more than 46 million active users every month. There are slightly more women bloggers – 50.9%.

41. Overall, there are 6.7 million bloggers.

(Source: BroadbandSearch)

These include not only Blogger users but also platforms like Tumblr.

42. Google.com gets 94.7 million organic visits every month in the US.

(Source: Ahrefs)

Interestingly enough, 7.2% of the traffic is from googling “Google”.

Global Internet Trends in 2019

So what do the global trends look like in 2019?

43. Internet of things statistics show a steady growth of devices.

(Source: Business Insider)

As more and more appliances become “smart,” the IoT is getting bigger – prognosis shows there’ll be over 64 billion devices by 2025.

44. Asia is the continent with most internet users worldwide.

(Source: TechCrunch)

In 2018, 53% of people online were from Asia. Europe is in second place with 15%.

45. Statistics indicate that China has the most internet users.

(Source: TechCrunch)

In 2018, 21% of all users were from China. India is the second best with 12%.

46. In 2017, the United Arab Emirates became the country with the highest internet penetration.

(Source: Statista)

99% of the country’s population (or about 9.2 million people) are internet users.

47. There’s a big increase of the time we spend online.

(Source: Daily Mail)

In 2000, the average American spent less than an hour and a half online daily. In 2018, it has risen to 6 hours and 31 minutes every day.

48. The number of global users is growing – over 50% or 3.8 billion people in the world are online.

(Source: TechCrunch)

Mary Meeker’s report on internet trends indicates that there’s a steady growth, but it’s gradually slowing down – +6% this year in comparison to +7% last year.

49. The e-commerce share in US sales is steadily growing.

(Source: TechCrunch)

In 2018, 15% of sales were made online vs. 14% the previous year.

Mobile Internet Statistics

We’re becoming more and more reliant on our phones – it’s a vast pool of information within a hand’s reach. So how has that affected our internet usage?

50. An increasing percentage of traffic is generated through mobile phones.

(Source: Statista)

In 2019, 63.4% of all traffic was mobile, compared to 2009 when it was only 0.7%.

51. The number of smartphone users is growing – in 2020, we can expect to see over 2.8 billion.

(Source: Statista)

For comparison, in 2016, 2.1 billion people owned smartphones.

52. South Korea is the country with most mobile users – 71.5% of the whole population!

(Source: vpnMentor)

The US is a close second with 69.3%.

53. The usage statistics indicate that mobile internet wins vs desktop in terms of web visits.

(Source: Perficient Digital)

In 2018, 58% out of 0.9 trillion web visits took place through mobile devices.

54. Asia has a higher than average mobile traffic – 65.1%.

(Source: Statista)

Africa is in second place with 59.5%.

Dark Internet Statistics

While it definitely has improved our lives, the internet is not only about amazing statistics – there are certain dangers that we all need to keep in mind.

Security

First, we’ll focus on the obvious danger. Security is constantly evolving, but so are criminal methods. So here are some statistics you should know:

55. Every day 30,000 new websites distributing malicious code get identified.

(Source: Forbes)

Contrary to expectations, the majority of these websites are legitimate small businesses that have been hacked by cybercriminals.

56. WordPress is the most targeted CMS.

(Source: Sucuri)

In 2018, 90% of hacked websites were using this platform. Despite what these statistics and facts are pointing to, the security of the CMS isn’t as bad as it seems. WordPress values user safety – it’s just that over 34% of internet pages are published there.

57. Hacking attacks can happen extremely fast.

(Source: Huffington Post)

Attacks over unprotected wireless networks can last less than 5 seconds.

58. Cybercriminals prefer to exploit certain technologies.

(Source: Open Access Government)

The trends are to focus on clouds, IoT networks, and phishing – a lot of internet security programs are already specializing in protecting those.

Statistics on Internet Addiction

Let’s also take a look at some worrying stats on internet addiction from around the world.

59. Half of UK teenagers are addicted to the internet.

(Source: The HealthSite)

In this study, 2,200 14 and 15-year-olds were interviewed. The children reported they found social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to be the most addictive.

60. In the US and Europe, 8.2% of people suffer from internet addiction.

(Source: Brandon Gaille)

The percentage rises to 18.5% in certain regions.

61. The age group 18-24 is the most affected.

(Source: Brandon Gaille)

71% of people in this age group are addicted to the internet.

62. Women are more likely to consider themselves addicted than men.

(Source: Brandon Gaille)

64% of women believe they’re suffering from internet addiction, compared to 55% of men.

63. In 2014, a study estimated that 6% of the world is addicted to the internet.

(Source: Business Insider)

To put things in perspective, another 2014 study found that 4.1% of adults suffer from alcoholism. Internet addiction risks are higher for nations with pollution, traffic, and dissatisfaction with life in general.

Conclusion

To sum things up – the internet is amazing!

It’s also evident that more and more people are coming to realize that. This technology makes our lives easier and our access to information faster than ever.

Even though it comes with certain risks, we can all agree it’s well worth it. So go, don’t waste your time on cat videos (perhaps just a little bit), and take advantage of all it offers!

(Psst, you can start with the rest of our posts!)

Bonus Round for the Curious

You’ve gone through the whole list of internet statistics but still want to learn more? Let us help you with that!

Statistics about what the internet is mostly used for:

According to a survey on Internet traffic, the most popular use of the internet is email.

About 85% of people online have an email and more than 293 billion messages are exchanged daily.

(Sources: TechBoomers, Statista)

Statistics on how many people use the internet:

The Digital 2019 report has come up with some interesting stats on the topic:

  • There are 4.39 billion people on the internet – that’s a 9% increase from last year.
  • 3.48 billion of them use social media.
  • 3.26 billion people choose to access social media from their phones.

(Source: We Are Social)

Statistics for why the internet is a good thing:

If you weren’t convinced by all the amazing internet statistics above, consider this:

  • 40% of people suffering from chronic illness find support online.
  • The number of students taking online courses has increased by 96%.
  • 35% of couples married in the US between 2005 and 2012, met online.

(Source: Blogthinkbig)

ABOUT AUTHOR

I've been a tech-addict all my life. I still remember the sound of a successful dial-up connection. I started my writing career at a very young age for a gamers' magazine. I'm fascinated by each new technology, as a kid with a long-anticipated Christmas gift. My hunger for knowledge and child-like fascination with everything with wires or codes helps me cover a wide array of articles here, on Review42.com. Whenever I'm not staring at a display I enjoy exploring new places.

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