Thank God! Very Important Study Suggests Using The Internet is Actually Good For Your Wellbeing and Enhances Life-Satisfaction

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Daily Mail - Using the internet boosts people's wellbeing and enhances life-satisfaction, a study suggests.

Despite popular concerns to the contrary, researchers from the University of Oxford say going online appears to have a largely positive impact.

Their comments come after analysing data from 2 million people aged 15 to 99 in 168 countries.

Incredible news for any of us who have ever felt that spending our entire lives staring into a screen 12+ hours a day was somehow "negatively" impacting us. Well suck on that mom and dad. Andrew Przybylski of the University of Oxford (ever head of it?) says ignoring you guys at dinner because I'm too busy scrolling videos of unhinged homeless men having public freakouts, and watching strangers scream at each other on airplanes is actually good for me.

At least that's what I'm taking away from the start of this article. I suppose I should maybe read further than the first few sentences before I start dunking on Baby Boomers. 

They found that life satisfaction across all nations was 8.5 per cent higher for those who had access to the internet and their positive experiences were 8.3 per cent higher.

Across more than 33,000 different statistical models and subsets of data, the researchers found that 84.9 per cent of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing were positive.

Andrew Przybylski, professor of human behaviour and technology at the Oxford Internet Institute, said: 'Overall we found that average associations were consistent across internet adoption predictors and wellbeing outcomes, with those who had access to or actively used the internet reporting meaningfully greater wellbeing than those who did not.

'We hope our findings bring some greater context to the screen time debate, however further work is still needed in this important area.'

Ok Andrew. I like where your head is at. I love the "internet is good for you" conclusion that you've drawn. But it sounds like you've simply compared the lives of people who have internet access to the lives of people who don't. 

Do you know who has access to the internet? People with homes. People who can afford to pay Verizon $70 per month for WiFi. Do you know who doesn't have access to the internet? Homeless people. People living in poverty. People in third-world countries. Did you just discover that people with money live better lives? Idk man. I'm going to keep reading, but at this point I'm not sure you discovered what you think you did.

He added that he believed a time would come when people would no longer be worried about social media and internet use in young people because they would be concerned about the next thing that comes along.

Well that just sounds like we're collectively saying fuck it. Which believe me, I'm all for. I said fuck it when it comes to monitoring my screen time long ago. Mom and dads across the world have passed off 75% of parenting duties to an iPad. I'll likely do the same some day. But more than anything I feel like that can be chalked up to laziness. Whatever, Andrew. Please continue with the findings of your major study.

Assistant Professor Matti Vuorre from Tilburg University, and previous research associate at the OII, said: 'We were surprised to find a positive correlation between wellbeing and internet use across the majority of the thousands of models we used for our analysis.'

In the study, wellbeing was measured according to eight indicators - life satisfaction, daily negative and positive experiences, two measures of social wellbeing (wellbeing attached to liking where you live and feeling safe there), physical wellbeing, community wellbeing and experiences of purpose.

Factors like education, income and health were also taken into consideration, however, the study did not look at social media use.

Alright this now might be the stupidest study I've ever read. I really wanted to be on your side Andrew. I had high hopes that you were going to tell me that there's a direct correlation between how many tweets I have, and much joy and satisfaction I get out of life. I wanted you to tell me that Barstool bloggers, internet commenters, and people with burner Twitter accounts who spend their days trolling politicians alike actually get the most pussy. But if you're not taking social media into account at all, then what's even the point?

Do you know why people with internet access live better lives? Because you fucking need to internet to do literally anything nowadays. I rented a car yesterday. There was an old couple in front of me in line to exit with their car. When they up to the gate to check out, they didn't have their rental agreement on hand. It was sent to their email, which they didn't know how to pull on on their phone. The rental car guy needed to scan the barcode on the agreement before he could let them pass. It turned into a whole ass ordeal. They ended up making them turn the car around, then they had to go inside and wait in a long ass line to speak with an agent at the front desk. It probably took an hour to get through. Me on the other hand… I have my email on my phone. They scanned my barcode and I was on my way in 30 seconds. 

In the study, published in the American Psychological Association's Technology, Mind and Behaviour journal, the researchers used data from the Gallup World Poll, from 2,414,294 people from 168 countries, from 2006-2021.

The poll assessed wellbeing with face-to-face and phone surveys which included questions like 'Does your home have access to the internet?', and asked about positive or negative experiences and life satisfaction.

Whilst the associations between internet access and use for the average country were consistently positive, the researchers did find some variation by gender and wellbeing.

Subject 1: Family of 6 who lives in a 20' x 20' sq. foot hut that's a 45-minute hike from the nearest water source (no internet access)

Subject 2: Newlywed couple with a two-bedroom town home in Columbus, Ohio.(internet access)

"It appears as if Subject 2 is significantly better off than Subject 1. This must be due to internet."

Andrew Przybylski of Oxford appears to have conducted a study proving the internet is helpful. Were you really surprised to find that out, Andrew? How is this what the good people of Oxford are spending their time on? It's like he did all this research, then in conclusion said, "You know what, it turns out there are a lot of useful applications of this internet thing. I think we might as well embrace it."

No shit, Oxford. Thanks for the catchy headline guys. For your next study you should see if people who own cars live better lives too.