Technology
Disentangling the effects of news stress and daily mood during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of passive social media use
Saskia L. Jorgensen, PhD
Lab Coordinator
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Jessica L. Hamilton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Rutgers
Piscataway, New Jersey
Jas Sarna, None
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Rutgers University
East Windsor, New Jersey
Jordan Holmes, B.A.
Research Associate
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Sarah Pedersen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Objectives: Current events and news coverage can have significant impacts on people’s stress levels and mood, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media (SM) is a primary means through which many individuals consume news, which may affect how and when people will be exposed to news media, including during recreational SM use (i.e., incidental news). Passively browsing on SM rather than actively using it (i.e., posting and sharing) can impact how news is consumed, perceived, and its potential impact mood. Past research suggests that passive SM use may negatively impact mood more than active use, but little research has examined this relationship in relation with current events/news consumption. To disentangle these effects, this study examined the daily within-person relationships between news/current event-related stress and daily negative mood during COVID-19, and whether SM engagement type impacted this relationship.
Method: Participants (N = 80) aged 21-31 years (M = 25.56, SD = 2.88) who drank alcohol at least weekly were recruited in this study. Most identified as Black (n = 50; 62.5%) and 31 identified as White (38.75%); 71.25% identified as female and 76.25% identified as heterosexual. Participants completed a baseline questionnaire of SM use, including the frequency of browsing and active use. Then, participants completed naturalistic surveys 4 times a day for 10 days. These surveys included an evening assessment of stress related to news/current events that day, as well as positive and negative mood (PANAS) averaged across the 4 prompts within the day. Multi-level models were conducted to examine whether within-person increases in news stress (compared to a person’s mean) was related to increases in negative mood, and whether SM use moderates this relationship.
Results: Individuals who identified as a sexual minority experienced significantly more news-stress than those who identified as heterosexual (t=-2.11, p = .038). There were no significant differences in news stress by race. White participants spent significantly more time using social media passively than Black individuals (t=4.412, p < .001), but there were no differences for active use. Within-person, higher-than-average amounts of stress related to the news during COVID-19 was related to higher-than-average negative mood, b = 0.44, p = .014. A significant interaction with SM type showed that higher-than-average news stress was associated with worse daily mood in individuals who reported more passive SM use, b = -.24, p = .001, but not in individuals who used SM more actively, b = -.11, p = .46.
Conclusions: Results suggest that on days when individuals have higher-than-usual levels of stress related to current events and news, they also have worse daily mood. Importantly, this may be driven in part by passive social media use, which is important given the ubiquity of SM news consumption. The difference in news stress by sexual orientation suggests that current events may uniquely impact the mental health of some minority groups. These findings highlight key points of intervention for managing news related stress during tumultuous periods such as COVID-19 and other current events which uniquely impact individuals and communities with minoritized identities.