Within the framework of our extensive Happiness Survey we explored whether the internet has an influence on your happiness and if spending more time online makes you happier. The representative online survey is based on the official UN study “World Happiness Report“, which annually investigates which countries in the world are the happiest.

For the study, we recruited 1.750 people between the ages of 16 and 69 years from our Online Access Panel in Germany, France and the UK and recorded their surf behaviour. We complemented this passively collected tracking data with the data from an online survey: We wanted to know how happy the participants currently are with their lives, to what extent they have the feeling that their lives are worthwhile, how happy and how anxious they felt the day before and how happy in general they consider themselves to be.

The result: The French are the happiest; 64% are overall happy with their lives. In comparison, 61% of Germans and 60% of the British are generally happy. Men (57%) are more content with their lives than women (43%); and the generation 50+ (50-59 years) are the happiest.

Our combination of the survey results with the online surf behaviour of participants reveals how the internet influences general happiness. The people who spend longer than one hour per day online tend to be unhappier (+34%) than those who spend less time online. The visitors to both Instagram (+8%) and eBay (+6%) are among those who are less happy with their lives than those who do not visit these sites. On the contrary, the share of happy people among those who visit travel sites (+22%) is larger than those who do not visit travel related websites.

Read more exciting insights about our Happiness Survey here.

If you would like to learn more about the connection between online behaviour and personal happiness, please get in touch. We are looking forward to hearing from you!