In this article, we explore various aspects of personal and psychological well-being during the COVID-19 crisis in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The data were gathered between 29 March and 20 June 2020. In the study on which this article is based (the information can be consulted at www.medium.com/proyectowise and www.unav.edu/yit), the authors paid particular attention to the role played by digital technology in this situation. The study began with a series of questions: who has suffered most during lockdown? Has there been a rise in the amount of time people have spent in front of screens? Does the reason why people use technology matter? What other factors contributed to personal well-being during lockdown? 

For the study, the authors created a well-being index with scores ranging from 0 (total negative well-being) and 10 (total positive well-being). This index encompasses a broad spectrum of indicators, both positive (happiness and self-esteem) and negative (unhappiness, anxiety, depression and stress), and aims to be an overall measurement of personal and psychological well-being. Well-being indicators included a subjective assessment (“In general, I see myself as a happy person”) and statements that needed to be scored, such as “I feel satisfied with myself”, “I feel as valuable as other people” and “I am just as capable of doing things as others”. The negative well-being indicators included a subjective assessment (“Since the state of alarm began, how much do you think your unhappiness has increased?”) and three indicators to measure levels of anxiety, depression and stress.

The results for all the survey respondents indicate that 16% have low levels of well-being (lower than 5, in magenta); these are the people who had the most difficult time during lockdown. 57% have average levels of well-being (between 5 and 8, in orange). 27% of the sample have high levels of well-being (above 8, in blue).

Graph 1 shows that women, young adults and people who have not completed higher education suffered from greater distress during lockdown: they present lower levels of well-being more frequently and are represented in smaller numbers among the ranks of those who enjoy a high level of well-being. The age profile related to well-being is significant: barely anyone over 50 suffers from low levels of well-being and over 40% of this segment present a high level of well-being. This potentially surprising finding, as older people are more at risk from COVID-19, seems to indicate that the disruption to daily routines (no attendance at school or work and the changes to leisure environments, social life and sport) has had a more detrimental effect on the well-being of young adults than among older people, whose lifestyle has been less affected.

During lockdown, the use of digital devices increased significantly. 19% of those surveyed state that they spent a lot more time and 52% declare that they spent quite a bit more time in front of screens. On average, the respondents spent over 9 hours a day in front of screens. Most of this time was spent working or studying, accounting for 5 hours and 22 minutes on average. The data collected in the study show that the daily time spent working in front of screens was, on average, 6 hours and 43 minutes among working people and 4 hours 52 minutes among students, a figure that includes online classes during lockdown.


 

The time not spent working or studying was given over mainly to communicating with friends and family, amounting to almost 5 hours during lockdown. Among social media users (Instagram, TikTok and the like), average use was 3 hours and 22 minutes a day. Entertainment (films, series and the like) accounted for 2 hours and 50 minutes a day. Video game fans (just over a quarter of the sample) spent an average of 2 hours and 11 minutes on them. Note that the time resulting from adding all these tasks together is greater than the total of 9 hours 16 minutes. This is due to the use of more than one device at a time (multitasking) and also, in part to poor recollection, as it is not easy to recall the total amount of time spent online every day and whether it was spent on one particular task or others.

The following two graphs show the relationship between the amount of time spent in front of screens and the level of well-being. This relationship is complex, as it depends on the length of time spent using technology and the reason why. Work-related uses and other uses will be shown separately.

For uses other than work-related, the greater the amount of time, the lower the level of well-being. As indicated in section 1, 27% of survey respondents presented a high level of well-being (a score of 8-10). Graph 3.1 shows that those who spent over two hours a day using social media (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.), entertainment (series and videos) and for communicating with others (calls and messages) present a high level of well-being less frequently than those who made a more moderate use of technology (two hours or less).

The data vary when we distinguish between people in work and students. Even though there are certain fluctuations, between 30% and 40% of people in work present a high level of well-being regardless of the length of time they spent working in front of screens. In the case of students, just 10% to 15% declare they have a high level of well-being, and there is no connection between this and the number of hours they spent using technology for study purposes.
It is important to remember that students are the age group that suffered higher levels of negative well-being during lockdown, as noted at the end of section 1.

Nowadays, the internet is used for practically everything, from work to gambling or looking for information about SARS-CoV-2. The study shows that an individual’s level of well-being is linked to these uses. Graph 4 includes seven possible uses of technology. For each one, it shows the proportion of people with a high level of well-being (a score of 8-10), with a comparison of those who do not perform the task in question at all or only a little with those who do so quite a bit or a lot.

For the majority of the uses in question, those who use technology most for the purposes indicated are less likely to present a high level of well-being. If we look at the differences between the pale and dark bars in the graph for each use, we can see that the biggest drops in well-being are to be found among those who use technology as a means to escape their problems (-20%), for entertainment or relaxation (-17%), to look at the lives of others (-13%), to find out about SARS-CoV-2 (-12%), to view pornography (-15%) or to gamble online (-4%). In contrast, the use of technology for organising work or study can even slightly increase well-being (+1%).
Once again, if we remember that 27% of the general population enjoy a high level of well-being, we can conclude that using technology is compatible with a high level of well-being, so long as it is employed in moderation. Generally, those who do not use devices for these purposes at all or only very little present levels of well-being higher than 27% except in the cases of pornography or gambling, for which even limited usage is associated with lower proportions of high well-being.

Experts in positive and negative psychological well-being often talk about protective factors: activities that protect against negative well-being or which foster positive well-being. The more of these protective activities a person does, the better they feel. In the study on which this article is based, evidence was found that physical exercise and hobbies that do not involve sitting in front of screens (such as painting, cooking, reading or playing an instrument) are associated with higher levels of personal and psychological well-being.

Specifically, 29% of respondents who made the most of lockdown to increase the amount of time they spent on physical exercise showed higher levels of well-being in comparison with the 24% of those who gave over less time to sport. There is an even greater difference among those who made the most of lockdown to spend more time on hobbies that do not involve the use of screens: 30% presented a high level of well-being, in comparison with the 20% of those who spent less time on these activities.

Personal and social relations are one of the aspects of life most affected by lockdown, since by far the majority of people found they were less able to spend time with friends and family in person. However, these relationships are among the factors must strongly connected with well-being during lockdown.

Graph 6 shows a clear tendency towards a higher level of well-being, the more people are happy with their relationships with their friends and family. In the case of family relationships, there are six times more people with high levels of well-being among those are who are very happy (43%) than among those who are not at all (7%) or not very (6%) happy with them. These proportions are similar to those with regard to happiness with friends: those who are very happy are eight times more likely to have high levels of well-being (42%) than those who are not all happy with their friends (5%). At the opposite extreme, 60% of those who are not at all happy with their close relationships also have low levels of well-being.
These results indicate that in a climate of social distancing, personal relationships are very useful for preventing negative well-being and for promoting high levels of well-being.

In the study, the people who stated they enjoyed a high level of well-being during lockdown are among those who made moderate use of mobile devices, and among those who spent most time engaged in leisure activities not in front of screens and in doing physical exercise. Those who succeeded in making moderate use of technology during lockdown presented higher levels of well-being more frequently than those who used it to excess – in other words, the level of positive well-being fell as people spent more hours a day employing mobile devices for the purposes of entertainment, social media or communication. Even so, despite the fact that personal well-being and technology are associated, it would be premature to conclude that excessive time spent in front of screens is the cause of negative well-being, as it could be the other way round: that users with high levels of negative well-being spend more time using technology and for escapist activities such as gambling, pornography and looking at the lives of others.

LOVIBOND, P. F., and LOVIBOND, S. H. (1995). "The structure of negative emotional states: Comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories", Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33(3), 335-343.

ROSENBERG, M. (2015). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press.