As recently as 2010, the internet was simply the bee’s knees—it was drawing humanity together, bringing authoritarians to heel, and generally creating solutions to any problem you’d care to think of. And then it wasn’t. After the disappointment of the Arab Spring and the disillusionment of Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations and Frances Haugen’s manipulation testimony, it actually turned out that the internet was rending our societies asunder and reducing us to enslaved, increasingly disturbed screen junkies.
I exaggerate for effect, but only slightly—there is a very strong narrative these days that tech is bad for us. So, in search of hard data, a couple of researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute studied two million people’s psychological well-being over the 2005-2022 period, and found…it seems we’re actually doing OK?
