Colloquium

Does authentic happiness exist in cyberspace? Implications forunderstanding and guiding college students’ Internet attitudesand behaviours

Sen-Chi Yu and Chien Chou

Address for correspondence: Sen-Chi Yu, Department of Counseling and Applied Psychology,National Taichung University. 140 Min-Shen Road, Taichung 40306, Taiwan, R.O.C. Email:fuzzyirt@yahoo.com

IntroductionAlthough some of the Internet’s negative impact on individual development and liveshave been documented in recent years (eg, Chou, Condron & Belland, 2005; Kraut et al1998; Suler, 1998), most of the users use the Internet positively for their personaladvancement and life convenience (eg, Amichai-Hamburger & Furnham, 2007;Lanthier & Windham, 2004). The Internet indeed provides a rich environment thatincludes significantly positive aspects as well as negative ones and, when used appro-priately, may greatly improve the well-being of its users (Amichai-Hamburger& Furnham, 2007).

Concerning the study of psychological well-being, Seligman (2002) proposed the ‘posi-tive psychology’ (also called ‘authentic happiness’) to integrate related studies aboutwell-being and happiness. In view of this, we argue that the field of positive psychologyshould be incorporated into the research issues of Internet psychologists.

Positive psychology: the real world and beyond?Positive psychology (Seligman, 2002) is a science about pleasant, engaged and mean-ingful lives. It has flourished in the last several years (Duckworth, Steen & Seligman,2005), and hundreds of related articles have been published in scholarly journals aswell as in the popular press (such as Time magazine). However, until now, the studies ofpositive psychology have been limited to the ‘real world’. We consider that the virtualworld also deserves the positive psychologist’s careful attention. We propose that cyber-space could be a place that fosters authentic happiness. People use the Internet to fulfiltheir daily functions (eg, keeping in touch with friends, searching for information,keeping a diary) and, on an emotional level, perhaps to increase their own authentichappiness. We will clarify why scholars in the field of positive psychology should studycyberspace in terms of pleasant lives, engaged lives and meaningful lives.

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Concerning the pleasant life (including well-being and ‘flow’ Csikszentmihalyi, 1990),extensively used Internet tools such as email, Skype and MSN facilitate our communi-cations with friends and co-workers and extend our real-world social networks tovirtual space. Such an extension of social involvement may well increase psychologicalwell-being.

Regarding the ‘flow’ experience of the pleasant life, some researchers (eg, Chen, Wigand& Nilan, 1999; Rettie, 2001) suggested that using the Internet can facilitate the occur-rence of the ‘flow’. Several studies indicated that the concept of flow is useful forunderstanding online consumer behaviors, online game playing and motivationstoward e-learning (Faiola & Voiskounsky, 2007; Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Pace, 2007).

Concerning the engaged and meaningful life, Seligman (2002) stated that to have anengaged and meaningful life is to identify and exercise one’s own signature strengthsand virtues. The meaningful life entails belonging to and serving positive institutions. Itis believed that positive traits and emotions flourish best in the context of positiveinstitutions (Duckworth et al, 2005). We argue that the Internet provides people with aspace, besides the real one, in which they can identify and exercise their own strengthsand virtues. Cyberspace provides many users with positive institutions, such as Web2.0, Wikis and free online courses provided by universities. Moreover, ‘Internet altru-ism’ (cf. Turkle, 1995) is easily identifiable online, and such help among net users istotally free. Supporters of this altruism think that the Internet is a utopia to which theycan dedicate themselves. In this sense, the Internet is a place that fosters meaningfullife.

The positive Internet use and college studentsConcerning the demographic composition of various Internet users, college studentsare noteworthy for educators. College students are usually early adopters and heavyusers of the Internet compared with the general population. The Internet is a part ofcollege students’ daily routine, in part because they have grown up with computers andthe Internet (Jones, 2002). Moreover, from the point of developmental psychology, theInternet not only provides an outlet for expression and exploration of intimacy andemotion not available in traditional settings, but it may also help students adjust to thecollege setting. The Internet allows students to fulfil unmet intimacy needs and toexplore social connections, sexuality and aspects of self that might otherwise remainhidden (Lanthier & Windham, 2004; Morahan-Martin, 2001).

In addition to many pedagogical and psychological benefits, however, there are poten-tial risks to college student users. Because of convenient Internet access, some collegestudents are more likely to be Internet-dependent than others. It is a challenge of oureducational system, including those of us in the helping professions, like psychologistsand educators, to guide college students into using the Internet positively. To achievethis goal, the educational system should involve finding new perspectives for enhancingthe psychological well-being and meaningfulness of the Internet users, which wouldbecome the focus for future Internet development (Amichai-Hamburger & Furnham,

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2007). To clarify, it is essential to guide college students into finding authentic happi-ness and seeking positive psychological resources from the Internet. That is, findingpleasant, engaged and meaningful virtual lives in cyberspace is a challenge to studentsas well as educators.

Conclusions and future plansAs mentioned above, because the Internet may significantly help college studentsdevelop their human potential, fulfil their psychological needs and increase their well-being, the study of authentic happiness in cyberspace is emerging and crucial. Tomeasure the constructs constituting the authentic happiness in cyberspace, we needvalid and reliable instruments. Therefore, the future plan of our current project is todevelop and to validate the Cyberspace Authentic-Happiness Scale (CAHS). In order todo so, theories and related studies of authentic happiness will be examined, availablemeasuring tools will be reviewed, and extensive interviews with college students will beconducted.

The hypothetical factor structures of CAHS, mainly following Seligman’s (2002) origi-nal idea, are the pleasant life, the engaged life and the meaningful life. The pleasant-lifesubscale measures positive emotions about the past (well-being, contentment and sat-isfaction), the present (flow and happiness) and the future (hope and optimism) incyberspace. The engaged-life subscale measures the degree of identifying one’s ownstrengths and virtues, whereas the meaningful-life subscale taps the degree of exercis-ing one’s own strengths and virtues. It is hoped that the theory of authentic happinessand validated measurement instruments will strengthen our understanding of collegestudents’ Internet usage and attitudes and thus help educators in guiding them to livea better life in cyberspace.

AcknowledgementThe authors would like to thank the National Science Council of Taiwan for thisresearch grant support under the contract (NSC-97-2511-S-001-MY2).

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