It was only a matter of time until academia turned a serious eye toward Internet cat videos.

“Consumption of online cat-related media deserves empirical attention,” said Jessica Gall Myrick, referring to what she “understudied” field of “online cat media.”

“Internet users spend a significant amount of time consuming cat-related media, some of that while they are supposed to be doing other tasks like working or studying,” she argues in a study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

For this paper, Myrick — an assistant professor at Indiana University and a researcher into media’s emotional effects — recruited 7,000 people for a lengthy online questionnaire about when, where and why they watch cat videos.

On average, her respondents watched cat videos two to three times a week, frequently on sites such as Facebook, YouTube and BuzzFeed. They tended to chance upon the videos in their social feeds, rather than seeking them out specifically. They were more likely to watch and like cat videos if they owned, or had ever owned, a cat; if they were shy, or if, predictably, they spent lots of time online.

No matter the personal variables, however, people reported feeling more energetic, happier and less stressed after watching a video of a cat — even when they felt guilty about it because they were supposed to be doing something else.

“Practically,” Myrick writes, “these findings … promote the idea that viewing Internet cats may actually function as a form of digital pet therapy and/or stress relief for Internet users.”

As frivolous as this might seem, Myrick’s research actually goes pretty far toward explaining why we have the Internet we do. In short, the social Web doesn’t favor clickbait and cat GIFs because it’s inherently shallow or stupid — but because that stuff feels good.

Incidentally, that framework on media consumption predates Internet cat videos. It’s called “mood management theory” (MMT), and was proposed by German researcher Dolf Zillmann more than 25 years ago. He argued that people gravitate toward content that either (a) makes them feel better or (b) maintains their current good moods. It explains, per previous research, why unhappy people generally choose more upbeat music, for instance, and why women experiencing PMS watch more TV comedies than other women do.

Could MMT also explain the rise of BuzzFeed and Upworthy and Emergency Pugs? Or the Internet’s apparent preference for memes and GIFs and goats over far more serious subjects?

Those are questions for future research, of course. But — ugh, sigh — more research means more work.