Poor Mental Health, Poor Internet, Poorer Life Satisfaction: Lessons from Filipino Students During COVID-19

Article information

Cleofas, J. V. (2023). Internet access as a moderator of mental health and satisfaction with life during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from young Filipino undergraduates from income-poor households. Children and Youth Services Review, 155(107255), 107255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107255

What this study is about

During the COVID-19 pandemic, education in the Philippines shifted heavily to remote learning. For students from income-poor households, this was not only an educational challenge. It was also a mental health, digital access, and social development issue. 

This study asks: How do mental health and internet access work together to shape life satisfaction among poor Filipino college students during the pandemic?

The study focused on young undergraduates from households earning less than PhP10,000 per month, or about 198 USDat the time. These were students already living with financial constraints, and the pandemic added more pressures: online classes, unstable connectivity, household stress, academic interruptions, and uncertainty about the future. 

The key argument is simple: poverty is not only about money. During remote learning, poverty also involved lack of access to digital resources and mental health support.

The theoretical lens: capability approach

The paper uses the capability approach, associated with Amartya Sen. This framework says that wellbeing should not only be measured by what people have, but by what they are actually able to do and become. 

In this study:

• Mental health is treated as a capability, or a condition that helps students function and pursue a good life.
• Internet access is treated as a technological context that can expand or restrict students’ opportunities.
• Satisfaction with life is treated as a functioning, or an achieved form of wellbeing. 

The conceptual framework in Figure 1 on page 3 shows this clearly: mental health is expected to predict life satisfaction, while internet access may change the strength of that relationship. 

What the researcher did

This was a cross-sectional online survey conducted during the third quarter of 2021. The study included 1,393 undergraduate students aged 18–24 from a public university in the Philippines. All students came from income-poor households. 

The study measured:

• Mental well-being using the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale;
• Internet access using students’ self-reported stability of connection: stable, somewhat stable, or unstable;
• Life satisfaction using the Satisfaction with Life Scale; and
• demographic variables such as age, sex assigned at birth, year level, work status, and residence. 

The study then used moderation analysis. In plain language, this tested whether internet access changed how strongly mental health was linked to life satisfaction.

---

What the study found

1) Most income-poor students had unstable internet

According to Table 1 on page 4, more than half of the students—53.8%—reported unstable internet access. Only 7.0%reported stable internet, while 39.2% reported somewhat stable internet. 

This is a striking finding. Remote learning assumes that students can connect online, but most students in this income-poor sample could not rely on stable internet.

2) Students had moderate mental well-being and life satisfaction

The sample reported moderate levels of both mental well-being and life satisfaction. This suggests that students were not uniformly doing badly, but they were also not thriving. 

This is important because pandemic student wellbeing was not only about crisis or collapse. Many students continued trying to cope, study, and stay hopeful—but under difficult conditions.

3) Mental well-being strongly predicted life satisfaction

Students with higher mental well-being also reported higher life satisfaction. This means that students who felt more useful, able to deal with problems, clear-thinking, and mentally well were also more satisfied with life. 

The finding supports the idea that mental health is not separate from social development. For young people living in poverty, mental well-being helps them evaluate their lives and future more positively.

4) Internet access was linked to life satisfaction

Students with unstable internet had significantly lower life satisfaction compared with students who had somewhat stable or stable internet. 

This shows that internet access during the pandemic was not just a school tool. It was part of students’ overall wellbeing. Reliable internet helped students attend classes, submit work, access information, communicate with others, and possibly reach online services.

5) Stable internet buffered the impact of poorer mental health

The study’s main finding is the interaction effect: stable internet access moderated the relationship between mental well-being and life satisfaction. 

This means that when students had poorer mental well-being, those with stable internet tended to have better life satisfaction than those with unstable internet.

The plot in Figure 2 on page 5 shows this buffering effect. The line for students with stable internet is higher at lower levels of mental well-being, suggesting that stable internet may soften the harmful effect of poor mental health on life satisfaction. 

In everyday language: when students were mentally struggling, stable internet seemed to help protect their overall sense of life satisfaction.

Why might internet access buffer poor mental health?

The paper offers several possible explanations.

Students with unstable internet may have faced added stress from not being able to join online classes, submit requirements, communicate with teachers, or access e-services. These difficulties could make poor mental health feel even heavier. 

In contrast, students with stable internet may have had better access to online learning, social connection, entertainment, information, telecounseling, and other psychological supports. This does not mean the internet “cures” mental distress. But stable access can give students more tools to cope, connect, and continue functioning.

The deeper message: internet as a basic need

One of the paper’s strongest arguments is that the pandemic made internet access look like a basic human need, especially for students. Without reliable internet, young people from poor households faced a double burden: economic poverty plus digital exclusion. 

This matters because remote learning policies often assume that students can simply adapt. But students cannot adapt equally when they do not have stable connectivity, private study spaces, suitable devices, or enough money for data.

Bottom line

This study shows that for income-poor Filipino undergraduates, life satisfaction during the pandemic was shaped by both mental health and digital access. Poor mental health was linked to lower life satisfaction, but stable internet access helped weaken that negative pattern. 

The key lesson is that student wellbeing cannot be addressed through mental health programs alone, nor through digital access programs alone. For poor students, mental health support and internet access must be treated together as part of educational justice and social development.

---

Policy/practice recommendations

1. Treat internet access as a student wellbeing issue
   Universities and policymakers should not treat internet access as merely technical infrastructure. It affects learning, mental health, social connection, access to services, and life satisfaction. 
2. Monitor students’ mental health regularly
   Schools should periodically assess students’ mental well-being and provide clear pathways for counseling, referral, and crisis support.
3. Design low-bandwidth learning requirements
   Assignments, lectures, exams, and submissions should not always require high-speed internet. Schools can use text-based, asynchronous, downloadable, and mobile-friendly formats. 
4. Use low-bandwidth mental health support
   For students with poor connectivity, telecounseling can use chat-based support, SMS, phone calls, or low-data platforms instead of video-only services. 
5. Create communal internet hubs
   Local governments, schools, and private partners can provide safe, shared internet spaces with reliable bandwidth for students from poor households. 
6. Support poor students beyond tuition assistance
   Financial aid should consider data costs, devices, electricity, learning materials, and mental health needs.
7. Advocate for internet access as a right
   The paper argues that advocates can push for policies that improve national internet infrastructure and equitable access, especially for poor households and students with mental health challenges. 

---

Glossary of key terms

• Internet access — The ability to connect reliably to the internet. In this study, students rated their connection as stable, somewhat stable, or unstable.
• Digital divide — Unequal access to internet, devices, bandwidth, digital skills, and online resources.
• Income-poor households — Households with very low income; in this study, less than PhP10,000 monthly household income. 
• Mental well-being — Positive mental health, including feeling useful, coping with problems, thinking clearly, and maintaining psychological functioning.
• SWEMWBS — Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, used here to measure mental well-being. 
• Satisfaction with life — A person’s overall judgment of how satisfied they are with their current life and future direction.
• SWLS — Satisfaction with Life Scale, used here to measure life satisfaction. 
• Capability approach — A development framework that focuses on what people are actually able to do and become, not only what resources they possess.
• Capability — A real opportunity or condition that allows people to achieve valued ways of living. In this study, mental health is treated as a capability.
• Functioning — An achieved state of being or doing. In this study, satisfaction with life is treated as a functioning.
• Technological context — The digital environment that shapes people’s opportunities, such as internet access during remote learning.
• Moderation analysis — A statistical method that tests whether one variable changes the strength or direction of the relationship between two other variables.
• Buffering effect — A protective effect where one factor weakens the negative impact of another. Here, stable internet access buffered the relationship between poorer mental health and lower life satisfaction. 
• Remote learning — Schooling delivered through online or distance methods instead of face-to-face classes.
• Low-bandwidth support — Learning or counseling methods that work even with weak internet, such as text-based modules, SMS, phone calls, downloadable files, or chat-based counseling.