Using Google to search about the Internet, anxiety and happiness

What is it about?

Research suggests that use of the Internet is correlated to emotional well-being. Meanwhile, Google has firmly established itself now as the de facto search engine. Then, is the way people use Google to search about the Internet correlated to the way they use the search engine to search about emotional well-being? This is the key question that the paper explores.

Featured Image

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The paper finds that how residents of a country search online about "anxiety" predicts the nation’s life satisfaction indices. In particular, the higher the search volume of ‘‘anxiety,’’ the greater was the score of the life satisfaction indices and vice-versa.