Although spending time online is often portrayed as something to be avoided, research shows that internet use is associated with improved happiness for people around the world.
There is intense debate about the potential impact on the health of the Internet, especially social media. Professor Andrew Przybylski from the University of Oxford, a co-author of the study, said: “Our analysis reveals for the first time whether internet access, mobile internet access and regular use of the internet are associated with global well-being. It has been verified,” he said.
Przybylski said previous research findings were limited by poorly conducted studies focused on North America and Europe, and studies that focused primarily on concerns regarding such technologies, particularly young people. Ta.
“It would be very good if we could target advice, tools and regulations to specifically protect young people, but there is simply no evidence to support that purpose,” he said.
The study, published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior, was conducted by Przybylski and Dr. Matti Voore of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, which surveyed approximately 1,000 people from 168 countries each year as part of the Gallup World Poll. It explains how the data collected through interviews was analyzed.
Participants were asked about internet access and usage, as well as eight different measures of well-being, including life satisfaction, social life, purpose in life, and sense of community well-being.
The research team analyzed data from 2006 to 2021 on approximately 2.4 million participants aged 15 and older.
Researchers employed more than 33,000 statistical models to explore a variety of possible associations, taking into account potentially influencing factors such as income, education, health problems, and relationship status. I was able to.
The results showed that Internet access, mobile Internet access, and usage generally predicted higher measures of various aspects of well-being, with 84.9% of the association between Internet connectivity and well-being being positive, 0.4% being negative; 14.7% were found not to be statistically significant.
Although the study could not prove cause and effect, the researchers found that people with access to the internet had an 8.5% higher measure of life satisfaction.
The study also did not examine the amount of time people spent using the Internet or the purposes for which they used the Internet, and may not have taken into account some factors that could explain the association.
Przybylski said it was important that technology policy be evidence-based and that the impact of any interventions be tracked.
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“If we want to make the online world safer for young people, we cannot cling to strong beliefs or one-size-fits-all solutions. We need to be sensitive to how data can change our thinking. “There is,” he said.
Dr Shweta Singh, assistant professor of information systems and management at the University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study, said there was no safe internet or harmless social media yet.
“While I love to agree with these findings and sincerely hope they are completely true, unfortunately there are counter-evidence and arguments that suggest that is not necessarily the case,” she said. In Canada, teenage boys were particularly affected, reaching a new high.
Professor Simeon Yates, from the University of Liverpool, said while there had been a lot of attention to the online harms and there were benefits, there were more nuances on both sides than the latest research had captured.
“Just because people mention higher levels of happiness doesn’t mean negative things aren’t happening to them online,” he says.
