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Online shopping is linked to higher stress levels

2026-01-14 19:55:00, Lifestyle CNA

Are you trying to reduce stress by shopping on Amazon and looking for cheap deals?

You may be choosing the wrong path, a new study says.

Online shopping is more linked to stress than reading the news, checking your mailbox or watching pornography, researchers reported January 9 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

"Our results show that an increase in social media use or online shopping is associated with an increase in self-reported stress across multiple user groups and across devices," lead researcher Mohammad Belal, a doctoral student at Aalto University in Finland, said in a press release.

For the new study, researchers followed the internet usage habits of nearly 1,500 Germans over seven months, using a tracking program that showed where they navigated the internet and for how long.

In total, the team compared data from nearly 47 million web visits and 14 million app uses, with self-reported stress from participants.

The results showed that time spent using the internet for shopping was associated with increased stress, regardless of whether people were looking for good deals on mobile devices or desktop computers.

Meanwhile, researchers found that people who read emails or news reported lower stress levels.

The same was true for internet pornography.

“Somewhat surprisingly, people who spent a lot of time on news sites reported less stress than others,” Belal said. “On the other hand, those who had already experienced a lot of stress did not spend as much time on news sites — and this is consistent with previous research showing that stress can reduce news consumption.”

Overall, the researchers found a strong link between internet use in general and higher stress, especially in people who already experience a lot of stress in their daily lives.

However, it's hard to say which way this relationship goes, the researchers said - do people go online or to online stores to relieve stress, or does browsing or shopping cause more stress?

"Are people more stressed because they spend more time shopping online or on social media, or do such sites provide them with important support in difficult times? It is really important to study these issues further in order to solve the chicken-and-egg problem," senior researcher Juhi Kulshrestha, an assistant professor of computer science at Aalto University, said in a press release.

"Imposing a blanket ban or upper limits on certain types of internet use may not solve the problems and may even remove a lifeline for people who are facing difficulties," .

The researchers plan to delve deeper into this issue, for example by looking at whether different types of news are related to stress and well-being.

"As we gain increasingly accurate information about people's internet use, it will be possible to design new types of tools that people can use to regulate their browsing and improve their well-being," Kulshrestha said./ CNA