Figure 8.1: Happiness and life satisfaction over time
European Social Survey (2016-24)
COVID-19 pandemic, with wellbeing rebounding in 2022, followed by a decline after 2023. responses to the ESS question, "On a typical day, about how much time do you spend using of the internet in minutes.23 Furthermore, we add the 3O countries covered by our ESS data, to report total use of more than six hours per day. Overall, we find that heavy users (6+ hours) are residents of each NUTS2 region across Europe, in percentage terms, comparing the average level of coverage from 2012-16 to 2020-24.24 This visual age. Conversely, light users (<1 hour) skew older, growth in internet use over the time span, with and seventies, with relatively little mass below 70% adoption in the early 2010s, contrasted with use to subjective wellbeing, we plot the correlation decade, with the majority of regions obtaining at least 8o% internet use among their residents. suggests a quadratic, or possibly cubic, relationship, previous studies, is the relationship between