Wonder Friends, we have some good news and some bad news. First, let's get the bad news out of the way.
We regret to inform you that in a matter of hours the Internet will be shutting down. For good. Forever. When you try to return to Wonderopolis later, all you'll get is a black screen that reads "Internet Closed."
We know that this news will come as a shock to most of our loyal readers. After all, we've all come to rely heavily upon the Internet on a daily basis. Very soon, though, there will be no more Wonderopolis, no more Google, and no more YouTube.
Curious Wonder Friends will likely want to know why this is happening. Simply put, cyberspace is full. The proliferation of memes and funny cat videos has led to an extreme shortage of real estate in cyberspace.
People stopped printing out things. They even stopped using hard drives to store their music and photographs. They saved everything to the Internet in something called "the cloud." Recently, that cloud has started to block out the Sun. For life on Earth to survive, the Internet must be shut down.
If there's anything you want to save from the Internet, you'd better do it quickly. There's not much time left. Fire up that printer you barely use anymore and start printing!
Also, be prepared to see more birds flying through the air. From now on, all email messages will be transported by carrier pigeon. They'll also now be known as "pmail" for obvious reasons.
Given this horrible news, you might be WONDERing what good news we could possibly offer at this point. Well, there is some, and it's this: we're kidding! Gotcha! The Internet isn't actually shutting down. We just thought we'd pull your leg as an April Fool's Day joke!
Could you imagine life without the Internet? Humans across the globe have come to depend upon the Internet heavily in many, if not most, areas of daily life. We use the Internet for research and sharing information online. We share our lives with others via social media. We stream music, movies, and television shows online.
For a better idea of how widespread Internet usage is today, check out these interesting facts:
As of June 2016, there were over 3.5 billion Internet users worldwide. Just over half of them are from Asia. North America, where almost 90% of the population uses the Internet, has over 320 million Internet users. By way of comparison, only about 45% of the population of Asia uses the Internet. Yet, that 45% adds up to over 1.8 billion users.
In 1995, less than 1% of the world's population had access to the Internet. Today, about 40% of the world's population has an Internet connection. Internet usage continues to grow and expand each year. The Internet reached 1 billion users in 2005, 2 billion users in 2010, and 3 billion users in 2014.
Today, the Internet consists of over 1.1 billion websites. From the first website in 1991 to more than 1 billion websites today, the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds over the course of its existence.