Does the Internet Increase Happiness?

It seems like an incredible question to ask, especially by someone who works in the internet industry. But the social scientist in me wants to prove it—the study of happiness has been a growth area of psychology/brain science these past years, and from what I’ve read there is a body of evidence that ubiquitous internet may not actually be a good thing for our stone-age brains. I've thought about this a lot in the past few years, but it was brought back to my attention by my half-brother's post about quitting Facebook.

Certainly the internet can make life more seemingly pleasurable. Endless music, entertaining stuff to read, communication with people you care about, the answer to any question you have, being able to take care of things conveniently with no need to talk to a human being.

But more pleasure may not necessarily mean happier. Due to the hedonic treadmill. and cognitive limits, we are hard-wired to only be able to process so much pleasure before Bad Things start to happen. Was I happier in, say, 1993, which was the last year I spent entirely off-line?

I think it would be interesting to test this. And what better subject to test it on than myself? So I propose the following personal project:

My Month of Living 1993-ally

Which would be lived by the following rules:

• Can use my Macbook, but only to word process/play games, and only at home. (if I choose 1993 as my year I can also use FM Pro and Excel)
• Can use iPhone, but only at home (or work), and only for calls and voicemail.
• Can use iPod, but only to listen to albums I purchased on CD and ripped—no shuffle.
• Can’t use internet, obviously.
• Can’t use remote unlock—have to open car door manually.
• Can’t watch DVDs (?) (renting movies existed in 1993) of if I do, can’t watch bonus materials/deleted scenes, or DVD shows of TV shows since those didn't really exist in any serious way fifteen years ago.
  
• Can watch only broadcast TV (not that this really applies, since I don’t have cable—but I can’t buy TV shows off of the ITMS, but since I can’t use iTunes, that rule doesn’t really apply.
• Can’t drink froofy coffee drinks like “pumpkin spice lattes”

Rules wouldn’t apply at work of course—but you couldn’t do personal internet stuff at work, and things like the ipod rule would need to be adhered too.
 
How long would one have to do this to answer the question of whether it increased happiness? A week? Two weeks? Month? Year? A month sounds about right to me—a Lentene period, long enough for the brain to rewire itself.