Stress Bytes: Decoding the Associations between Internet Use and Perceived Stress

TL;DR

This study addresses how internet use relates to perceived stress by combining seven months of fine-grained web-trace data with six monthly stress assessments in a longitudinal, multimodal design. It introduces a contextual framework across how, where, when, and by whom internet use occurs, and contrasts coarse versus fine-grained usage features in linear mixed-effects models. The findings reveal context-dependent associations: social media, entertainment, online shopping, and gaming tend to correlate with higher stress, while productivity, news, and adult content show negative associations in certain contexts, with mobile data often showing stronger effects than desktop data. The work highlights implications for designing personalized, real-time self-monitoring tools to promote healthier online behaviors and reduce stress, while noting limitations such as sample specificity and measurement constraints.

Abstract

In today's digital era, internet plays a pervasive role in our lives, influencing everyday activities such as communication, work, and leisure. This online engagement intertwines with offline experiences, shaping individuals' overall well-being. Despite its significance, existing research often falls short in capturing the relationship between internet use and well-being, relying primarily on isolated studies and self-reported data. One of the major contributors to deteriorated well-being - both physical and mental - is stress. While some research has examined the relationship between internet use and stress, both positive and negative associations have been reported. Our primary goal in this work is to identify the associations between an individual's internet use and their stress. For achieving our goal, we conducted a longitudinal multimodal study that spanned seven months. We combined fine-grained URL-level web browsing traces of 1490 German internet users with their sociodemographics and monthly measures of stress. Further, we developed a conceptual framework that allows us to simultaneously explore different contextual dimensions, including how, where, when, and by whom the internet is used. Our analysis revealed several associations between internet use and stress that vary by context. Social media, entertainment, online shopping, and gaming were positively associated with stress, while productivity, news, and adult content use were negatively associated. In the future, the behavioral markers we identified can pave the way for designing individualized tools for people to self-monitor and self-moderate their online behaviors to enhance their well-being, reducing the burden on already overburdened mental health services.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Overview of the study design and contextual dimensions. The top panel shows our longitudinal study design combining desktop and mobile web‐trace data with monthly stress questionnaires. The middle panel depicts the internet use and well-being features extracted from web browsing traces and monthly questionnaires. The bottom panel shows the contextual dimensions we consider for examining associations between internet use and stress.
• Figure 2: Overview of significant internet usage behaviors across various contextual dimensions. The icons represent different internet use features. The rows correspond to a combination of the time frame (30 days or 2 days) and device type (desktop or mobile) and the columns correspond to factors pertaining to individual differences ( stress levels, gender, age, income). Red icons denote positive associations, while blue icons indicate negative associations. And the intensity of the color reflects the strength of the significance, with lighter icons denoting weak significance (0.05 $<$ p $<$ 0.1), and darker icons representing high significance (p $<$ 0.05).