How Online Browsing Shapes – and Reflects – Mental Health

On average, we spend around six-and-a-half hours online every day – most of it glued to our smartphones. While it often starts as a simple search for information, it typically devolves into doom scrolling or conspiracy chasing.

That’s the anecdotal evidence. Now, new research digs into the type of info we’re looking for, and how it messes with our heads.

“The results contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between mental health and online behavior,” University College London PhD student and co-author Christopher Kelly explained. “Most research addressing this relationship has focused on the quantity of use, such as screen time or frequency of social media use, which has led to mixed conclusions.

“Here, instead, we focus on the type of content browsed and find that its emotional tone is causally and bidirectionally related to mental health and mood.”

The Feedback Loop Between Mood and Browsing Behavior

The project – comprising four studies – discovered that the emotional tone (or valence) of the content that we consume online plays a huge part in shaping our mental health and overall mood.

Specifically, the researchers uncovered a link between negative content consumption and worse mental health outcomes, including anxiety and depression symptoms.

On the other hand, those of us already in a bad mood appear to be more likely to browse negatively valenced content. Its behavior that drives a punishing feedback loop of negativity.

The researchers identified this bidirectional relationship using natural language processing (NLP) tools that analyzed the emotional tone of participants’ web-browsing histories. These tools assessed the valence of webpage text, quantifying how positive or negative the content was. 

The results consistently showed that browsing negatively valenced webpages exacerbated participants’ mental health across various dimensions, including mood and psychological well-being.

Browsing Influences Mood

To put their theory of causality to the test, the researchers started by manipulating the browsing experiences of participants in their first study. Participants exposed to negatively valenced content reported much lower mood levels afterward and subsequently gravitated toward more negative content during their free browsing time. This confirmed a causal feedback loop: consuming negative content worsens mood, which in turn influences individuals to seek out even more negative content.

In their final experiment, the researchers tested an intervention aimed at breaking up this destructive cycle. They presented participants with visual cues stipulating the potential emotional impact of web pages before browsing.

For example, labels such as “feel better” or “feel worse” popped up next to the individual search results. Participants who had access to these cues browsed much less negative content and reported a better mood afterward.

This intervention suggests a practical approach to mitigating the impact of online information consumption on mental health. By equipping users with tools to anticipate the emotional effect of their browsing choices, this research illustrated that we can alter our web-browsing patterns in ways that better support our emotional well-being.

Implications for Mental Health and Online Behavior

These research results counter earlier findings that solely looked at screen time or general internet usage as mental health barometers. Instead, the team focused on the (emotional) quality of the content rather than the quantity.

Unlike earlier studies that examined aggregate search queries or social media behavior, this new research offers a more nuanced understanding by analyzing the affective properties of content consumed.

What the team found could have far-reaching implications. For starters, it shows us how we can use digital tools to support mental health, whether its through real-time feedback or curated browsing environments.

On the other hand, these findings spark concerns about how easy it is to access negative content and how quickly it can infect our mental health on a much broader scale.

Maintaining Our Mental Health in the Digital Age

This study supports how online behavior influences our emotional well-being – for better or worse. It also offers both theoretical insights and practical solutions.

The Internet isn’t going anywhere. And as we spend increasingly more time online, it’s just as critical that we get a better grasp on recognizing and addressing on how that time influences our mood, behaviors, and beliefs.

By building a methodology to assess and alter web-browsing patterns, researchers have taken a big step toward integrating digital literacy with mental health initiatives.

Further Reading

CDC Report Reveals Jump in Adult Anxiety and Depression

Surgeon General Issues Mental Health Advisory for Parents

Evaluating the Psychiatric Effects of Social Media