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According to a joint study by Chinese and American researchers, excessive use of social media during a pandemic can cause depression and secondary trauma.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Canton University in Canton to Computers in human behavior In a study published in a scientific journal, they surveyed 320 people in Wuhan, central China, on how they accessed health information and shared it with friends, family and colleagues on WeChat, the most popular social network in China. China.
A stress scale was used to measure the participants’ anxiety and depression, categorizing questions as “I feel like life is meaningless” or “I have disturbing dreams about a coronavirus epidemic.”
Bu Zhong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of the study, said his research team began investigating the effects of social media use on people’s mental health shortly after curfew was ordered in Wuhan. to stop the coronavirus epidemic. He said: “We did not expect the epidemic to go global. We think that we might discover some invisible damages from the epidemic. In China, local media did not report on Covid-19. If someone relied on reading local newspapers or watching television, they would not receive information about the virus. This put people under severe stress, so they became heavily dependent on social media. “
Previous research has shown that in times of crisis, more people rely on social media to find and share medical information. A Harris poll, for example, found that between the end of March and the beginning of May, between 46 and 51 percent of American adults said they used social media more often than before the epidemic.
The authors of the new study found that more than half of the participants experienced some form of depression, although they did not experience any trauma or depressive disorder before the epidemic. Participants will attend approx. Twenty percent have experienced moderate or severe depression, and just over 20 percent have experienced moderate or severe secondary trauma, which occurs when people hear about the traumatic experiences of others.
Based on the stress model, the researchers found that excessive use of social media was associated with much more severe levels of depression and secondary trauma.
Zhong said it is important to understand how social media (including Facebook and Twitter) can help people in times of health crisis. He said: “We don’t want people to think that social media is bad. We want them to know that there is a need for balance, and if someone exceeds the threshold, that is, they check the news every 5 to 10 minutes, it can cause them even more stress. Social media should not be condemned. We have to pay attention to how we use it. “
The social dilemma also deals with other topics related to social networks. (via MTI)
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