No link between internet use and poor mental health, according to Oxford boffins Increased use of the internet has not had a notably negative effect on mental health, according to a study combining data from millions of people across 168 countries. The study, titled "Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age," examined material from prior research conducted between 2005 and 2022 that …
Furthermore, the definition of "wellbeing" is very loose and the results are based on self-reported responses to quite vague questions.
In order to find out what they're testing for more solidly they'd have to define their terms more rigorously, query all respondents several time at reasonably long intervals and even maybe resort to sources such as medical histories.
I'd love to know where you get a sample of young people across all social/economic groups that don't use internet to compare them to
It's like a study that showed CRT monitors are bad for you, by comparing blood pressure in Wall St traders who used CRT monitors and Amish farmers who didn't.
I remember in 1998 when Pakistan and India were arguing with each other, there was a real threat of a nuclear war between them. I was about 11 years old at the time, and I remember the fear of thinking I could wake up the next day to a nuclear wasteland, or just full on be killed in my sleep. Even before then we had Black Wednesday when I was even younger, and all I understood from it was a load of money was lost and people were losing jobs. Were we going to be poor? Were we going to be homeless?
There was no internet in the house for me to see this or know about it. There was no Instagram, Faceache, YouTube and the like. All there we had was the 6 o'clock news and the newspaper.
Call a spade a spade here, the method of media consumption isn't the problem. It's the media that's making everything so fucking miserable and scary.
""We looked very hard for a 'smoking gun' "
Looking for a smoking gun is the wrong way to conduct objectve science, and any 'science' that's not objective is not really science at all. The legitimate approach should be on the lines of "we set out to find whether there is a correlation between ..."
Maybe they should be looking at the psychological profile of those more likely to openly embrace high internet use, rather than looking at the internet on back to the user? In other words, the type of user who's mental health does indeed get influenced by high-level internet use might be more likely to show a high probability to addictive behaviours, a higher indices of loneliness, be more greatly influenced by social pressures, greater seeking of outside validation to dampen a personal feeling of insecurity, etc etc?
Time and again they find out that socialising, sleep and exercise are the core three benefits to well-being. Over and over they find those three things and yet they're still looking. Does radio impact it? No, only socialising, sleep and exercise. Does TV impact it? No, only socialising, sleep and exercise. Does the internet impact it? No, only socialising, sleep and exercise.
Perhaps I could pick something random and be paid £40k... what about... Cliff Richard? Does Cliff Richard negatively impact well-being? Then find out that... wait a minute... I've found that Cliff Richard doesn't impact it, only socialising, sleep and exercise do.
It should be easier than this: "Is thing X on the list socialising, sleep and exercise? No? Then it has minimal impact on well-being"
> Then why are we all so miserable?
It is said that the internet has not made people stupider, it has just made the stupid people more apparent.
Maybe the same is true for the miseries? Before the internet they would just whinge and moan to their friends and family. Now they can whine on to millions. Not only that but they attract and encourage others to do the same. There seems to be a sort of complaining one-upmanship where one person moans that they had to wait 20 minutes at the Post Orifice, then the next one says "that's nothing, I had to wait 30 minutes, in the rain" and so on.
However, as Monty Python reminds us, this phenomenon is not new.
"The authors analyzed both datasets by demographic and location, compared them to local internet usage rates, and found no evidence "that the internet and technologies enabled by it, such as smartphones with internet access, are actively promoting or harming either well-being or mental health globally.""
So they got data on people and their mental health, and than just compared that the the areas internet usage?
That does not seem like a very sound study.
You could also poll people their mental health by just asking a random sample of people how they feel, then look at the number of pubs and off licences in the area and say *Ah Ha! Alcohol has X effect on mental. ealth" but that's not really how that works.
What if they people they polled were for whatever reason not internet users, hard to imagine but a possibility, that would likely find vastly.different results for heavy internet users on the same poll.
Internet usage was low before YouTube and Facebook appeared, we saw no one with "issues" until everyone started posting on Facebook and other sites ... increasing the Internet access everywhere and many people posting "complaints" about other people ... poor mental heath just started getting worse and as a result, politicians started to get a lot more votes and the companies running the sites that are causing poor mental health started to get richer.
Psychedelic drugs are banned because they are seen as creating mental health issues ... what would happen if I posted that thought on social media?
Is it getting worse, or just more vis8bke and talked about.
The generation before me would rarely talk about how they feel and they worse they feel the less they talked.
Now we are encouraged to talk, talk to each other, and share our problems. Could it be that you are just seeing it more?
Nope it may not be bad for the general population but...
Gambling is ok for most people
Drinking us ok for most people
Taking recreational drugs,
Looking at "beauty" magazines / blogs
Looking at historic nazi articles
Reading about ancient aliens
Reading about government cover ups....
But...
If you are susceptible, in a weakened mindset, or are teetering on the brink, , then it IS bad.
Take a girl worried about her "puppy" fat.
In the old days, she'd buy a single copy of cosmopolitan and that's it.
Now she can scroll endlessly looking at images, join pro anorexia groups, get thousands of people telling her she looks great now she ways 40kg.
So yes, this study is "technically" correct, but employed poor methodology to get the results.
I asked a psychiatric nurse recently had she noticed any trends over the last 10 years.
Her immediate response was that the number of teenage girls/young women presenting in their clinic with suicidal ideation, self-harm (mostly cutting themselves with blades) and eating disorders has increased markedly in this timeframe.
Obvious solution is to go back to a time when teenagers could only be referred to the clinic for treatment by their GP and have GPs ignore mental health issues in teenagers, it's only a phase they're going through, et viola a reduction in mental health clinic admissions for teens.
《May I suggest they read the Daily Mail comments (*)? That should make anybody rapidly lose the will to carry on existing.》
Pretty much my thinking. I imagine anyone unfortunate enough to still have vital signs in contemporary England is seriously contemplating changing that.
Reading the authors' background I imagine there is possibly a bit of MRDA.
The Zuck must be ecstatic with this study. After all, if the internet doesn't affect wellbeing, then neither do Instagram filters
I remember trying to ask out girls (prior to Windows 1995, which is when the internet started in earnest) and every single one of them said they were suffering some kind of emotional crisis.
I was like, what gives with this???
The only thing they all had in common was that they all happened to be suffering nervous breakdown at precisely the same moment that I happened to be makin’ my moves on ‘em.
+*+ Mystified! +*+
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As a clear example, it can easily be argued that folks using the Internet to grab music, movies and video games they otherwise couldn’t afford probably gain serious mental health benefits relative to not doing so. All the modern harms people complain about are unique to the WWW and smartphone apps which depend upon it, which make up a small fraction of the Internet.
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