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The internet is ruining our lives, right? Not necessarily, according to a new study.
“Nearly everyone seems to think that internet-powered technologies are driving an epidemic of ill-being and mental health problems,” said lead study author Dr. Matti Vuorre, assistant professor of social psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, in an email.
“Our study of over two million individuals from 160+ countries runs contrary to this idea.”
People with access to home internet and/or mobile internet and actively use internet report greater well-being across eight different categories — including life satisfaction and social life, according to a study published Monday in the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior.
Researchers analyzed data from nearly 2.5 million people across 168 countries using the annual Gallup World Poll, trying to answer the following question: Do individuals who have access and actively use the internet report greater or lower levels of well-being than those who do not?
“Because even such a simple question can be statistically answered in many different ways, we analyzed the data in tens of thousands of different ways,” he added.
Across all those ways of crunching the numbers, about 85% showed that those who have and use the internet report greater well-being that those who do not, according to the research.
The global perspective is useful, and the data analysis of the research is strong, said Dr. Markus Appel, professor of the psychology of communication and new media at the University of Würzburg in Germany. He was not involved in the research.
Other research has shown that the connection between mobile internet use and well-being is complex and varies among individuals, he added.
“The internet is neither a curse (nor) a blessing for people’s well-being,” Appel said. “It depends on what people do with it.”
Online users report greater well-being
This study was observational, meaning that the data doesn’t show that the internet access necessarily caused the better well-being — there might be other factors responsible for the association.
“Our results might then simply indicate that individuals with more money, access to healthcare, etc, report greater well-being,” Vuorre said in an email.
The researchers accounted for that in their data and tried to adjust for factors such as income levels and still found that internet users reported greater well-being than those non-internet users, Vuorre said.
Cut the internet or keep scrolling?
The internet is used for a wide variety of things — including online banking, shopping, finding services, reading the news and cyberbullying — and those different uses will have different effects on well-being, Vuorre said.
Much of life has moved online very quickly, and it hasn’t left much time to investigate all the impacts of the internet, he added.
“We as a society and/or academic scientists don’t have time to sufficiently learn and develop methodology to address each panic carefully and therefore do not learn sufficiently to be able to inform policy and make conclusions with confidence,” Vuorre said. “Caution is warranted on all sides.”
Many studies have shown concerning connections between social media use and mental health, particularly among younger people. Scrolling through images of other people’s lives and comparing them with your own has been associated with a poor effect on mood, for example.
Before institutions advise harsh limitations on computers and mobile phones, more research is needed on both the potential harms and benefits, Vuorre said.
“Although prominent narratives and the cautionary principle might suggest draconian limitations to technology use, ours and many other findings provide a much more nuanced and mixed view,” he added.
To get the best out of your internet use, Appel recommends being mindful of your own experience.
“If you sense that some activity on the internet makes you feel sad or envious — stop it. Look out for something else,” Appel added.