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Because they did use more than the web. Usenet, e-mail, FTP, etc.

Yes and as another responder pointed out Gopher as well. Perhaps that's my bias I think that was still mainly the techy crowd.

Most of the non-technical people I helped get connected in those days were only interested in how to find the Netscape browser icon. With Eudora email and later Outlook Express as a close second. They certainly didn't really differentiate the Internet from the Web. Perhaps that was just my limited experience here in Australia.

Most people I knew called it being online or on the internet in the mid to late '90s. A lot of people I knew used applications like Free Agent and mIRC and a certain GUI FTP client (which I can't remember the name of).

FlashFXP was my goto awhile ago.

You mean the information superhighway? ;o)

but "surfing the net" could have meant gopher too in 1995

Especially in countries with languages where there are no separate words for "net" and "web", which are quite a few.