Internet Safety

Psychological Well-Being

Psychological well-being has been a topic of interest from the beginning of Internet safety research. In his seminal paper, “Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?” Kraut and collegues (1998) documented the negative effects of the Internet, namely displacing offline social activity and personal relationships. In a later paper, Kraut and his co-authors walked back some of their strongest statements about the negative effects of the Internet, but also found that personal characteritsics (personality type) mediated the negative effects of problematic Internet use (Kraut et al., 2002).