Contrary to previous research that suggests internet use can have a deleterious effect on mental health, a new study of more than 2 million individuals suggested it can actually enhance well-being.
Between 2006 and 2021, investigators studied over 2 million people between the ages of 15 and 99 years in 168 countries, focusing on their psychological well-being and their use of the internet. Many of the included countries have rarely or never been studied in this connection.
Utilizing close to 34,000 different statistical models, the researchers found that almost all the analyses showed positive and statistically significant associations between internet connectivity and well-being.
"We were surprised to find a positive correlation between well-being and internet use across the majority of the thousands of models we used for our analysis," lead author Matti Vuorre, PhD, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands, and research associate, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford, England, said in a news release.
The study was published online on May 13 in Technology, Mind, and Behavior.
A Global Phenomenon
Coauthor Andrew K. Przybylski, PhD, professor of human behavior and technology, Oxford Internet Institute, explained the motive for conducting the study.
"Whilst internet technologies and their platforms and their potential psychological consequences remain debated, research to date has been inconclusive and of limited geographic and demographic scope," he said.
He noted that the "overwhelming majority" of studies have focused on the Global North and on younger people and "ignoring the fact that the penetration of the internet has been, and continues to be, a global phenomenon."
The researchers set out to address this gap by analyzing "how internet access, mobility internet access, and active internet use might predict psychological well-being on a global level across the life stages," Przybylski continued. "To our knowledge, no other research has directly grappled with these issues and addressed the worldwide scope of the debate."
To study internet use, the investigators analyzed data from the 2022 Gallup World Poll, a nationally representative survey of each country's civilian, non-institutionalized adult population (ie, aged ≥ 15 years), conducted between 2002 and 2022. The poll assessed well-being using face-to-face, as well as phone interviews, conducted by local interviewers in the respondents' native languages.
The total sample size included 2,414,295 adults drawn from 186 countries (53.1% women), drawn from countries that included those located in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
The researchers examined eight indicators of well-being. These included life satisfaction, daily negative and positive experiences, two indices of social well-being, physical well-being, community well-being, and experiences of purpose.
Covariates included respondents' income, education, work, relationship status, the ability to meet basic needs (food and shelter), and whether they reported having health problems.
Greater Life Satisfaction
The researchers conducted a "multiverse" of 33,792 types of analyses, researching the average differences in well-being between individuals who had access to mobile internet or had used the internet in the past 7 days.
They found that for the average country, those who had access to the internet reported approximately 0.08 units greater life satisfaction, positive experiences, and social life satisfaction and 0.06 units lower negative experience than those without access.
They also reported approximately 0.08 units greater experiences of purpose and 0.1 unit greater physical, 0.02 units greater community, and 0.08 units greater social well-being than individuals without access.
Being an active internet user was associated with a 0.03- to 0.08-unit increase in life satisfaction, positive experiences, social well-being, and physical well-being and a 0.04-unit decrease in negative experiences. Access to a smartphone predicted increases of 0.06 and 0.07 units.
Although the standard deviations (SDs) of well-being outcomes were small (eg, the median life satisfaction difference was 0.36 SDs between individuals who did and did not have access to the internet), they were "not negligible."
In fact, when the researchers examined the associations' robustness across all analyses, they found that 84.9% resulted in positive and statistically significant associations between internet connectivity and well-being.
Of the 4.9% of associations between internet use and community well-being that were negative, most were observed among young women between the ages of 15 and 24 years.
While the researchers did not identify this as a causal relationship, they noted that this finding is consistent with previous reports of increased cyberbullying and negative associations between social media use and depressive symptoms in young women.
"Overall, we found that average associations were consistent across internet adoption predictors and well-being outcomes, with those who had access to or actively used the internet reporting meaningfully greater well-being than those who did not," Przybylski said.
The study's limitations included comparing individuals with each other, given that there "are likely myriad other feature of the human condition that are associated with both uptake of internet technologies and well-being in such a manner that they might case spurious associations or mask true associations," the authors noted.
Moreover, longitudinal studies tracking participants over time can provide more information about the "contexts of how and why an individual might be affected by internet technologies and platforms." Additionally, the self-reported measures of technology might be "lacking."
Przybylski hopes that the findings will "bring some greater context to the screen time debate; however, further work is still needed in this important area."
He urged platform providers "to share their detailed data on user behavior with social scientists working in this field for transparent and independent scientific enquiry, to enable a more comprehensive understanding of internet technologies in our daily lives."
A Starting Point
In a separate news release, Kevin McConway, PhD, MBA, Emeritus professor of applied statistics, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England, noted that there has been "endless debate and considerable speculation on the possible effects of internet use on well-being, in general across all ages, but more specifically in relation to children and young people."
The current study "certainly extends the available information beyond simple speculation and beyond previous studies that used participants mostly in relatively rich Northern countries," noted McConway, who was not involved in the study.
However, he cautioned, the study is only "a starting point, and if nothing else, it casts very serious doubt on the view, held by some people, that the internet is bad for us all."
In particular, the observational nature of the study meant that the positive associations between internet use and measure of well-being could have been caused by other factors and are not causative.
Additionally, "it's important to understand that none of the well-being measures used in this research has been properly validated by experts in psychological measurement," said McConway.
No source of study funding was listed. Przybylski's research is currently supported by the Huo Family Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council and was recently supported by the ESRC. In the preceding 5 years, Przybylski has also worked on research grants provided by the John Fell Fund, The Diana Award, and the children's charity Barnardo's. These research grants were paid to Przybylski's employer, the Oxford Internet Institute. During this period, Przybylski has also engaged unpaid consultations with several organizations including UNICEF, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Meta Inc., UKIE, UK Research and Innovation, The UK's DCMS, The Office of the UK's Chief Medical Officer, the Office of the US Surgeon General, The UK's Academy of Medical Sciences, and the UK Parliament. There were no financial products or benefits resulting from these consultations. Vuorre reported no relevant financial relationships. Neither author reported any conflicts of interest. McConway is a Trustee of the Science Media Center. However, his remarks are in the capacity of an independent professional statistician.
Batya Swift Yasgur, MA, LSW, is a freelance writer with a counseling practice in Teaneck, New Jersey. She is a regular contributor to numerous medical publications, including Medscape Medical News and WebMD, and is the author of several consumer-oriented health books as well as Behind the Burqa: Our Lives in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom (the memoir of two brave Afghan sisters who told her their story).