> The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.
I'm not seeing how they accounted for the fact that people with access to the Internet are more likely to have access to other things that would improve life satisfaction such as food security, quality health care, social and economic safety nets, education, and leisure time. I would imagine factors such as these play a bigger impact than the Internet on a person's well being.
"The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems."
The linked paper has a section on Covariates that explains the methodology used to control for factors such as income.
It is very easy to underestimate the affect of covariates in observational studies. That’s why randomized control trials are kind of the gold standard for understanding causative relationships.
I saw that, but I'm still not convinced. Correlation not equalling causation and all of that. There are too many factors that play into personal well being and the regions of the world with pervasive access to the Internet are drastically different from the regions of the world without it.
What are your specific methodological concerns? The model the authors build is a multi-level regression model. They attempt to establish independence between the covariates but do note specifically that:
"In turn, this suggests that the contributions of internet access and use on well-being were independent of the covariates we selected for, and thus might indicate causal relations. (Although we highlight the evidence here for causal claims is less than thin.)"
I think it would be more useful, especially on a forum known to have a strong opinion on a topic, to establish alternate theories that match these observations and independence relations.
There are an impossible amount of variables at play here. Localities where Internet is pervasive in comparison to areas where it isn't might as well be another planet.
I'm not convinced that this study proves what is claimed.
Please firm up your claims. You're getting dangerously close to saying "no amount of evidence can dispel me of my preconceived conclusion" which is pseudoscience. Science is about uncovering evidence then creating theories to fit this evidence. When new evidence arises, old theories are discarded and new theories are created which explain new evidence. It's not about saying "you can't convince me of your conclusion so I'll ignore your evidence."
I would say specifically that controlling for other variables is tricky when there are a lot of them that strongly correlate: it's very easy to still have a residual effect after trying to remove them. So if those other factors are much stronger effects, it should increase the standards of evidence for smaller factors.
Please don't resort to ad hominem attacks. As an Internet user I would actually prefer the conclusions of this study to be correct. Also, I am wrong about things. A LOT. I am completely comfortable admitting that.
However, I find it to be extremely unlikely that the design of this study is sound. I'm not convinced that the scientific community even knows what all of the variables that determine your level of well being are, much less having the ability to account for them in a study like this.
As I have repeatedly stated elsewhere in this thread, in regions of the world with pervasive Internet access there are many, many factors that lead to increased well being, and conversely, in regions of the world without pervasive Internet access there are many, many factors that lead to decreased well being.
This study has accounted for some of the obvious variables here, but certainly not all of them.
You called the criticism "ad hominem", but your own criticism of the study lacks any substance. How about look at their method [0], and/or the method of the polls that their findings are based on [1], and justify your opinion that the design of this study is not sound.
If you can't provide concrete debunks then your complain is nothing but hot air.
Their method cannot account for all of the variables that affect well being because no one fully understands what all those variables are, much less having the ability to account for them in a study like this.
Per your links they accounted for just 6 variables, not nearly enough to make the stated conclusion with any confidence:
> In addressing our second research question, our aim was to approach the independent contributions of internet access and use on well-being. To that end, we adjusted for plausible (and available) covariates in our models that might otherwise mask or bias any independent contributions of internet access on well-being or create spurious associations. We chose six variables to represent such potentially confounding factors that have been previously considered important in the literature on well-being (): the respondent’s income (e.g., ), educational (), work (), and relationship statuses (), their ability to meet basic needs for food and shelter, and whether or not they reported having health problems ().
Which is why you need high-quality and large-scale data on the relationship between income and internet usage and the relationship between income and happiness so you can chain those together and subtract the whole thing out. Yes, error bars stack up rapidly. That's why you need 2 million data points to get a reasonable conclusion, when you only need ~1000 to get high-quality information on things like consumer preferences or political affiliations. Good thing that we have plenty of people that are very interested in things like "how much happier does money make you" and full-scale datasets like that are produced on a regular basis!
Really, the math isn't any harder than what's necessary to land a rocket screaming along at mach 8 or reverse a couple terabytes of voltage readings into a nice clean volumetric medical image.
Exactly. 2.5 mil is not peanuts. Yes, you can always get more data. But let's not pretend 2.5 is not sufficient to establish statistical relationships.
Sure, but it's a large sample based on self-report instruments.
This is definitely evidence, but I do share the OP's concerns around controls and would regard this finding as somewhat likely to be biased by the kinds of people who both a) have internet and b) are willing to respond to a really, really long poll.
"“The study cannot contribute to the recent debate on whether or not social-media use is harmful, or whether or not smartphones should be banned at schools,” because the study was not designed to answer these questions, says Tobias Dienlin, who studies how social media affects well-being at the University of Vienna. “Different channels and uses of the Internet have vastly different effects on well-being outcomes,” he says."
>The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access.
The current HN title ("2.4M person study: Internet use boosts, not hurts, well being") seems a bit of a stretch with regard to causation.
Because the title itself was clickbaity (“surprise effect”) I tried to summarize both title and subtitle.
I think I did ok in that regard, but as you say the two sentences could themselves overstate things. But I figured any more edit would get into the discouraged editorializing
> However, women aged 15–24 who reported having used the Internet in the past week were, on average, less happy with the place they live, compared with people who didn’t use the web.
I was wondering about the overall effect for young folk and women in particular. It seems like the effect is fairly narrow and not what I would expect.
I also wonder if the effects from substantial social media interaction could be teased out.
The internet is a wonderful thing, having access to learn new skills, research any topic and connect to people is great. Social media is awful, growing up with it definitely impacted my self image and even as an adult I am not immune to it.
I do think it does more good than harm though especially with people who may otherwise not have many organic opportunities at social interactions.
Which might be if it said they were spending a lot of time online.
It just says in the past week. Most folks I know use the internet a little bit each and every day, even if they aren't being social. Banking, playing a single player game (after logging into playstations network, of course), reading news, watching a show or movie.
>I also wonder if the effects from substantial social media interaction could be teased out.
Yeah, this is what I was thinking as well. The internet absolutely has a positive effect on my life. Finding out which store I need to go to, how to do simple home repairs, how to start a garden, maps, ordering groceries (we've got 4 young children; grocery pickup is a life saver).
And on the other hand, social media is terrible for me. There's just something about doom scrolling that's hard to give up because it's the perfect way to kill dead time.
I don't need a multi-million person study to know that it boosts mental illness too, I know that from personal experience. Cut out all the social media, the porn, and limit my HN/Youtube usage, and yeah, it's not bad for me. The internet is a powerful, yet dangerous tool. Use it properly, and it's a good thing.
I think putting internet usage in the west and the developing world into the same bucket is… of questionable utility. I bet access to the wider world is in fact a benefit in many parts of the planet.
But why on earth is that comparison worth examining as evidence that the internet is good for wellbeing in the west?
Isn’t the internet probably better in the global south or with non English languages just because spam is generally more difficult and less valuable to produce?
This seems like a confounding variable just because platform popularity all by itself tends to be the end of a decent platform, social network or otherwise.
People are social animals. Why wouldn't they benefit from the use of social tools and a worldwide fast-as-light communication network?
The problem, to me, isn't that TikTok or Twitter or Whatever exists, it's that they're in the control of monopolists and not of the users, and to the maximum extent possible these companies have loaded these tools with expertly constructed dark patterns designed to stultify and distract users away from self improvement and into self indulgence.
> People are social animals. Why wouldn't they benefit from the use of social tools and a worldwide fast-as-light communication network?
Because those tools are often not a good fit for human sociability? "More and faster" is not always better, though it's a tempting metric for technology people because it's oversimplified and easily quantifiable.
I meant social tools in general. The second paragraph addresses what I believe to be the specific mechanics driving our current popular flawed implementations of these tools. It should be noted, these are not the only sites in existence, and viewing "social media" strictly through the lens of them is probably unproductive.
> The second paragraph addresses what I believe to be the specific mechanics driving our current popular flawed implementations of these tools.
I don't agree with your assessment. I think there are fundamental problems with these tools not caused by "monopolists" or "dark patterns." One that easily comes to mind is the dysfunction that comes from people being separated from in-personal social feedback and other kinds of regulatory practices.
> One that easily comes to mind is the dysfunction that comes from people being separated from in-personal social feedback
You seem to be describing a situation in which the person is not _choosing_ to use these tools. In which case, it doesn't seem like the tool that's the problem, but a corporation using it inappropriately.
Which, again, is the result of the labor market being monopolized. If this practice is as deleterious as you suggest, then why put up with it, unless you don't have a realistic choice. So, I actually think you've precisely made my point for me.
I'm not seeing how they accounted for the fact that people with access to the Internet are more likely to have access to other things that would improve life satisfaction such as food security, quality health care, social and economic safety nets, education, and leisure time. I would imagine factors such as these play a bigger impact than the Internet on a person's well being.