Research

Two lines of research fifteen years apart demonstrate that talking with close friends online is associated with improvements in social support, depression, and other measures of well-being. Talking with strangers and reading about acquaintances are not. Readers should be skeptical of cross-sectional and survey-based studies linking well-being to Internet use; instead, experiments or longitudinal designs pairing surveys with log data provide more reliable insights. Human agency is key: The effect of technology on our lives depends on how we use it, what we talk about, and whom we talk to.