this is classic "i'm getting old" posting i know but i can't believe that there are some adults - and quite a few people who are nearly adults - people who are on this website and probably didn't even lie about their age - who are young enough that they don't remember the moon exploding. Still feels like it was maybe four or five years ago but nope, it's a bit over 16 now.
Actually on that note maybe I should clarify something for the younger people on here. Generally the moon exploding is talked about as the start of the age of magic because it was this big defining moment (and I can't stress enough it really was a big defining moment), but there was stuff happening in the months before that too. Last I checked the date of the first incident hasn't been settled but it was at least a year before then. It's just that most of the stuff that made the news or affected so many people you really couldn't ignore it happened after that.
But those of us who were around for it and got lucky or paid attention have stories from before the moon exploding too. About a month before it a friend of mine was in this big group chat of people who all exchanged contact details with eachother in dreams. People in that group chat kept going to exchange details with other people while dreaming only to find that they were also in unrelated group chats formed under the same conditions, so really it was this long series of group chats that kept merging together and moving platforms. Oh yeah, then they became the Dreamweavers, you might have heard of all that. And I had a toaster mailed to me with no return address. I didn't order one. Thought it was broken when I tried it out but I eventually worked out that it just turned toast back into bread. I know that's not as exciting as being a Dreamweaver but my point is that there was a lot of stuff going on back then. The moon exploding was just concurrent with all that. It's really just a coincidence that like, the glowing mana pools or the thing with the bees didn't make global news before then.
There is something to be said for how the moon exploding led to a lot of people who had somehow already experienced magic to decide not to hide it so much. For a lot of people it sort of went from "no-one can know or they'll take me away and do experiments on me/i'll become some sort of travelling freak/this will lead to the revival of the witch trials/nobody will believe me anyway" to "what the hell, moon just exploded, might as well tell everyone that i can turn into a bear now". That's why for a lot of people who missed out before then it seemed like everything started to happen all at once, and I think that led to this overall impression that the moon exploding was the start of this era.