Going online could be good for you, new study finds

Spending time online could have a positive impact on your well-being, according to researchers from the University of Oxford.

Drawing on an extensive dataset spanning 16 years and involving more than 2.4 million participants worldwide, the study sheds new light on the relationship between internet access and factors contributing to a person’s satisfaction and purpose.

The comprehensive analysis, which scrutinizes data from the Gallup World Poll ranging from 2006 to 2022, indicates that individuals with access to the internet reported an 8% higher score in well-being measures compared with those who don’t use the web.

The revelation stands in contrast to common apprehensions regarding the adverse effects of internet use on mental health.

“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,” Matti Vuorre, an experimental psychologist and researcher in the study, said in a press release Monday.

The investigation differs from previous inquiries by its scale and the demographic diversity of its subjects, encompassing responses from people ages 15 and older from 168 countries. Prior studies often concentrated on younger demographics within specific regions such as the U.S. and Europe.

“We set out to address this gap by analyzing how internet access, mobile internet access and active internet use might predict psychological well-being on a global level across the life stages. To our knowledge, no other research has directly grappled with these issues and addressed the worldwide scope of the debate,” said Andrew Przybylski, a psychologist and another researcher in the study.

“We hope our findings bring some greater context to the screen-time debate,” he added.