Going “beyond the GDP” in the digital economy: exploring the relationship between internet use and well-being in Spain

In recent years, as Internet use has become more widespread, the use of “beyond-GDP” measures have become increasingly important, bringing well-being analysis into a more prominent position within scientific research topics. At the same time, our society is going through a deep process of digital transformation, which is characterized by important digital inequalities, mainly rooted in traditional socio-economic divides between and within population groups. The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between internet use and individuals’ perceived levels of well-being. Five dimensions of well-being are studied: happiness, life satisfaction, social meetings, personal connections and social life participation. The modelling strategy consists of a set of three-simultaneous equations, in which the first one explains individuals’ internet use; the second one, the intensity of usage (measured by the time spent on the internet) and the third one, focuses on the impact of such intensity on well-being. To estimate such models microdata from two rounds (2016 and 2018) of the European Social Survey (ESS) are collected for Spain. Results show that the effect of internet usage depends on the dimension of well-being considered, being negative for happiness, life satisfaction and meetings but positive as regards connections and participation. Furthermore, the relationship between individuals’ well-being and internet use depends, to a large extent, on the socio-economic and socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals.