What impact does technology have on our national happiness?

Details

Created on Tuesday, 5 April 2011

While our relationship with technology is rapidly evolving, it already underpins every determinant of human wellbeing: it influences our social and family life, our financial situation, our work – both what job we get and how satisfied we are with it – it disrupts some communities and allows us to forge new ones, it impacts health and is an increasingly important lever in how we express political freedom (Layard, Social Market Foundation).

It also has an important and growing role to play in supporting public policy aims, including fostering moral and psychological health (Social Market Foundation). Therefore, as Government sets out to invent new measures by which it might then improve life satisfaction, we believe it’s vital it gives serious consideration to the impact technology has on human happiness. While there is no shortage of surveys, most concentrate on the malign impact technology has on happiness, and what we still lack is data to inform a clear and balanced debate about its impact on wellbeing.

While we need to acknowledge and examine the negative impact technology has on wellbeing – in the relationship between information overload and overwork and anxiety for example – we need to put this in the context of big quality of life gains we realise by access to the internet: in reducing isolation, combating depression, saving money and giving people the tools to explore interests – by producing as well as consuming culture for example – and through access to more responsive services.

And along with gathering data on the positive and negative impact technology is having on the quality of life of the 40 million of us in the UK who use the web, the ONS survey also provides an important chance to explore the effect people’s failure to use technology creates on wellbeing. This, while the founding premise of Race Online 2012's campaign, still remains relatively unexamined. Both in terms of more timely and responsive delivery of services and in expanding our opportunities for work, social networks, and education, vulnerable groups have the most to gain from access to the web.

We would appreciate your contributions to this important area of public policy research under the following three themes:

• Digital services and happiness
More and more of our education, health, housing and leisure services are now delivered online. Government currently tends to measure service delivery on expenditure, so fail to capture the significant upswings in satisfaction from volume, productivity and quality increases that internet-first delivery allows. By capturing consumer satisfaction data, government and charities could get a clearer picture of the benefits of channel-shift.

• Information society and happiness
We work, learn, connect with each other and express ourselves politically online. This will continue to be an area of rapid change. Government statistics are needed to help capture both the malign and the benign impact our increasing use of digital has on our happiness. Government measures should seek to establish how technology improves or undermines wellbeing – both subjectively and objectively.

• Digital divide and happiness
As one of our most recent social inequalities the digital divide warrants particular attention. All the key determinants of wellbeing – material living standards, health, education, personal activities including work, political voice, social connections and relationships, environment, economic security – are now contingent on digital skills but we need more data on the ways in which absence of internet use now impedes wellbeing.

Please build on our arguments with specific evidence of the ways in which technology is influencing human happiness so we can help the Government form the right framework for a more balanced debate about how technology is impacting society.

What do you think? Is technology vital to your well-being? Leave a comment or join the debate by visiting - http://well-being.dxwconsult.com/consultation/

You can also join in via Twitter @statisticsONS, by using ONS's debate hashtag #ukwellbeing