The Conditional Effects of Internet Use on Well-being: Heterogeneous Trust Mechanisms and the Boundary of Subjective Social Status

The increasing integration of the internet into public life has ignited an intense academic debate regarding whether digital technology fundamentally fosters or erodes social capital and subjective well-being. To address this complexity, our study rigorously utilized the Lagged Fixed Effects (LFE) model and multi-period panel data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to examine the long-term, cross-period causal structure of internet use and well-being. The research confirms a highly conditional and heterogeneous dual-track mechanism. While internet use generates psychological costs via family and neighbourhood trust (bonding capital), its ability to foster stranger trust (bridging capital) is strictly contingent upon subjective class identity. However, even for individuals with higher class recognition who successfully accumulate this bridging trust, it ultimately lacks the emotional depth to translate into long-term subjective well-being. Crucially, the study found a persistent barrier preventing this interpersonal trust from converting into institutional trust, despite political trust being the key driver of long-term well-being. By uncovering these asymmetric mechanisms and boundary conditions, this research significantly advances social capital theory and social comparison theory in the digital context. The findings provide crucial evidence for understanding the digital well-being paradox, offering targeted insights for public governance aimed at mitigating the unequal distribution of digital benefits across different social strata.