New Study Links Excessive Internet Use to Higher Stress and Poorer Mood

Islamabad (GNP): Spending excessive time online is associated with higher stress levels, a worsened mood, and a greater tendency to neglect other important areas of life, according to new research from academics at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, surveyed 900 German adults who reported engaging in gaming, pornography use, social networking, or online shopping at least once over the preceding year, offering fresh insight into how patterns of internet use relate to daily wellbeing.

Researchers classified participants’ internet use as either pathological, risky, or non-problematic depending on how frequently they engaged in these activities, with pathological and risky use together grouped under the broader category of problematic internet usage.

The study defined this problematic usage as excessive engagement with online applications to a degree that caused functional impairment or personal distress, distinguishing it from ordinary, non-harmful internet use.

To track how these patterns played out in daily life, participants completed evening assessments over a two-week period, reporting their mood, stress levels, temptation to engage in problematic internet use, and overall time spent online each day.

The assessments also captured how much pleasure participants derived from their internet use and whether other activities or responsibilities were neglected as a result, allowing researchers to build a detailed picture of the relationship between usage patterns and daily wellbeing.

The results showed a clear pattern: participants exhibiting more severe problematic internet usage consistently reported worse mood, higher stress, longer periods spent online, and greater neglect of other areas of their lives. Notably, the study identified temptation, rather than stress or mood alone, as the primary factor driving continued internet use, with feelings of pleasure and relief acting as reinforcing elements that encouraged the behaviour to continue.

Andreas Oelker, co-author of the study, said the momentary urge to go online played a larger role in shaping behaviour than stress or mood on their own, determining whether people engaged in online activities and experienced the rewarding or harmful consequences that followed.

He added that understanding why individuals at risk of problematic use go online at specific moments is essential to developing more effective prevention and treatment approaches, suggesting that helping people recognise and manage these moments of temptation could prove more useful than focusing solely on stress or mood.

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These findings supported the research team’s initial hypothesis, confirming that daily stress, mood, and temptation could be used to predict a person’s internet usage on any given day, and that these same factors in turn influenced the pleasure, relief, and neglect of other activities experienced as a result.

The researchers were careful to note that not all internet use carries negative consequences, emphasising that their findings apply specifically to problematic or excessive patterns of use rather than everyday engagement online.

Co-author Silke M. Müller reinforced this distinction, noting that only a small percentage of internet users go on to develop pathological use patterns. She said that using the internet can bring genuine joy, enjoyment, or relief from stress in a healthy and enriching way, provided that other important areas of life, including essential responsibilities as well as activities known to benefit wellbeing such as exercise, time outdoors, and socialising with friends, are not systematically neglected as a result.

The findings build on earlier research suggesting that young people with internet addiction may experience measurable changes in brain chemistry, with previous studies identifying effects across multiple neural networks and increased activity in certain brain regions during periods of rest, pointing to a broader body of evidence linking problematic internet use to changes in brain function over time.