Despite being heavily censored, China's internet appears to be reshaping how people see the world.
Specifically, it's making old Chinese less likely to believe in a just world.
It is, after all, less controlled by the Chinese government that what is broadcast on radio and TV or published in newspapers, magazines, and books.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences collected data on 12,309 retirees in a 2013 study published in the journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. They asked people about their belief in a just world according to the General Belief in a Just World Scale, which ranges from 6 to 36, with a higher score indicating a greater belief the world is just.
It turns out that old Chinese who get their news primarily from the web averaged a score of 22.5, much lower than the rosy outlook of people who get their news from friends (26.5), print publications (26), or radio and TV (25.5).
In China, much of the media people consume is heavily censored by the government. In one 2014 ranking, the country ranked 175th out of 180 countries in terms of freedom of the press. The result is that people learn from traditional media sources that their home country is generally prosperous, with personal work ethic as the backbone of the nation's progress.
The new study suggests the internet undermines this illusion.
"In China, compared to the state-controlled newspapers and television, the Internet often covers more multifaceted content, specifically including more information, reports, and news that are negative," the researchers write. "Excessive exposure to such news might negatively influence some individuals' perceptions and judgments of how society and the world are not so stable, just, or satisfactory."
While China is a unique case, these findings uphold prior research involving dozens of meta-analyses that tie internet use to life dissatisfaction, regardless of where users are from.
When people browse the internet, they are exposed to a much wider scope of news — not all of it uplifting — that may taint their worldview. Online, people also turn to social media, which studies have repeatedly shown can lead to feeling worse about your own life.
The internet isn't the only medium that changes people's impression of the world.
A popular theory in media studies, known as "Mean World Syndrome," suggests all the blood, crime, and violence featured at the top of most news segments leads people to falsely believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is.
In reality, humans are the least violent they've ever been and crime is going down just about everywhere.
The internet may be a vast wasteland of cat videos and equally horrible comments on those videos, but it's also where humans pool their knowledge.
And that's enlightening.
