Internet use linked to higher well-being - study

Spending time online is often portrayed as something to be avoided, but research shows that internet use is linked to higher well-being for people around the world, The Guardian reports, writes UNN.

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The potential impact of the Internet and social media on well-being has been the subject of intense debate. "Our analysis is the first attempt to test whether Internet access, mobile Internet access and regular Internet use are associated with well-being at a global level," said Professor Andrew Przybylski of the University of Oxford, who co-authored the paper.

Przybylski said previous findings have been limited by poorly conducted studies, a focus on North America and Europe, and studies largely focused on concerns about such technologies, especially for young people.

"It would be really good to be able to target advice, tools and regulation to protect young people in particular, but that evidence just doesn't exist in a way that would be useful for those purposes," he said.

Published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behaviour, the study describes how Przybylski and Dr. Matti Voorre of Tilburg University in the Netherlands analyzed data collected from interviews with about 1,000 people each year from 168 countries as part of a worldwide Gallup poll.

Participants were asked about their access to and use of the Internet, as well as eight different indicators of well-being such as life satisfaction, social life, purpose in life, and sense of community well-being.

The team analyzed data from 2006 to 2021, covering about 2.4 million participants aged 15 and older.

The researchers used more than 33,000 statistical models, which allowed them to explore a variety of possible links, taking into account factors that may have influenced them, such as income, education, health problems and relationship status.

The results show that Internet access, mobile Internet access, and Internet use in general suggest higher scores on various aspects of well-being: 84.9% of the associations between Internet connectivity and well-being are positive, 0.4% are negative, and 14.7% are not statistically significant.

The study couldn't prove causality, but the team did find that life satisfaction scores were 8.5% higher for those with internet access

The study also did not take into account the amount of time people spend online or what they use it for, although some factors that could explain the associations may not have been accounted for.

Przybylski said it's important that technology policy be evidence-based and that the impact of any measures be tracked.

"If we want to make the online world safer for young people, we simply can't operate with firm beliefs and one-size-fits-all solutions. We really need to make sure we are sensitive to the fact that data changes our minds," he said.

Dr. Sweta Singh, associate professor of information systems and management at the University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study, said there is no safe Internet or harmless social media yet.

"As much as I would love to agree with these findings and would love for them to be completely true, unfortunately there is counter-evidence and arguments that suggest that this is not necessarily the case," she said, noting reports that the number of "sextortion" (blackmail through intimate photos and videos) cases in Canada has reached a new high, with teenage boys particularly affected.

Professor Simeon Yates, from the University of Liverpool, said there was a big focus on online harm, but there were also benefits, although in both cases there were more nuances than the latest study was able to capture.

"Just because people talk about higher levels of well-being doesn't mean there aren't negative things happening to them online," he said.

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