Excessive social media use during the pandemic is a predictor of symptoms of depression and secondary trauma, suggests a new study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Jinan University in Guangzhou, China.<\/p>\n
The study, published last month in Computers in Human Behavior, surveyed 320 participants living in Wuhan about how they accessed and shared health information with friends, family members, and colleagues over WeChat, China\u2019s most popular social media app. They also used a stress scale to measure anxiety and depression by asking participants to rate statements such as \u201cI felt that life was meaningless\u201d and \u201cI had disturbing dreams about the coronavirus epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bu Zhong, a journalism professor at Penn State and a coauthor of the study, said that the team began looking into the effects of social media use on people\u2019s mental health right after Wuhan was locked down to curb the spread of the new coronavirus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t expect that this would become a global pandemic,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were just thinking that we could reveal some invisible harms caused by the outbreak. In China\u2019s situation, local media was not reporting on COVID-19. If you just read the local newspaper and watched television, you didn\u2019t get information about the virus. This made people extremely stressed, and they began relying overwhelmingly on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Excessive social media use linked to depression during pandemic https:\/\/t.co\/2ZxbhKzz8a<\/a><\/p>\n — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (@PittsburghPG) October 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n