Spending time online is often presented as something to avoid, but research suggests that Internet use is associated with greater well-being in people around the world.
The potential impact of the Internet, and social media in particular, on well-being has become a topic of intense debate. “Our analysis is the first to test whether Internet access, mobile Internet access and regular Internet use are related to well-being at a global level,” said Professor Andrew Przybylski of the University of Oxford, co-author of the paper. .
Przybylski said previous findings had been limited by poorly conducted studies, a focus on North America and Europe and research that primarily looked at concerns about such technology, particularly in relation to young people.
“It would be really nice to be able to target advice, tools and regulation to protect young people in particular, but that evidence simply doesn’t exist in a way that is useful for those purposes,” he said.
Published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior, the study describes how Przybylski and Dr. Matti Vuorre, from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, analyzed data collected through interviews involving around 1,000 people each year from 168 countries as part of the Gallup World Poll.
Participants were asked about their Internet access and use, as well as eight different measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction, social life, purpose in life, and feelings 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, allowing them to explore several possible associations while taking into account factors that could influence them, such as income, education, health problems and marital status.
Results reveal that Internet access, mobile Internet access, and overall use predicted higher measures of different aspects of well-being, with 84.9% positive associations between Internet connectivity and well-being, 0 .4% negative and 14.7% not statistically significant.
The study could not prove cause and effect, but the team found that measures of life satisfaction were 8.5% higher for those with Internet access.
The study also did not look at the amount of time people spent using the Internet or what they used it for, while some factors that could explain the associations may not have been considered.
Przybylski said it was important that technology policies were evidence-based and that the impact of any intervention was tracked.
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“If we want to make the online world safer for young people, we simply can’t go in with strong prior beliefs and one-size-fits-all solutions. We really need to make sure we are sensitive to data changing our minds,” she said.
Dr Shweta Singh, assistant professor of management and information systems at the University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study, said there was still no such thing as a safe internet or harmless social media.
“As much as I would like to agree with these findings and really want them to be true in their entirety, unfortunately there is evidence and counterarguments that suggest that is not necessarily the case,” he said, pointing to reports that cases of ” “sextortion” in Canada had reached a new high and teenagers were particularly affected.
Professor Simeon Yates, of the University of Liverpool, said there had been a lot of focus on online harms, but there were also benefits, although there was more nuance to both than the latest study had been able to capture.
“Just because people report a higher level of well-being doesn’t mean that negative things don’t happen to them online,” he said.