COVID-19 news consumption and distress in young people: A systematic review

The Impact of COVID on Adolescent Anxiety: Trends, Clinical Considerations, and Treatment Recommendations

Rates of clinical anxiety have increased during COVID and post-quarantine in youth, with older adolescent girls and youth with minorized racial, gender, and sexuality identities most vulnerable. Given that increased anxiety to a threatening/uncertain environment is adaptive, it is important to conceptualize anxiety from a balanced perspective, evaluating its functionality. For adolescents continuing to struggle with re-integration into their social environments and school avoidance, an exposure framework is necessary to encourage approach behaviors to recalibrate the social environment as safe. Disproportion between demand for services and available providers increased greatly due to the pandemic. Evidence-based treatments for anxiety can be delivered via telehealth, in school, or in primary care settings.

The impact of 24/7 news coverage on the mental health of Israelis in the 'Iron Swords' War: A cross-sectional analysis among television audience

This study aims to assess the impact of continuous 24/7 news broadcasting on the mental well-being of Jewish Israelis during the 'Iron Swords' War and compare it to findings from the 2014 Conflict. An internet-based cross-sectional panel survey was conducted on 11-12 October 2023, during the 'Iron Swords' War. The study focused on Israel's adult Jewish population, enabling comparisons with a previous 2014 study. Participants reported news consumption changes, attitudes towards newscasts (burdensome, relaxing, stressful, addictive, Fear Of Missing Out [FOMO], avoidance), opinions on 24/7 news, and anxiety symptoms. Among 802 adult Jewish participants in Israel, 83.8% increased news consumption. While more than 70% of respondents found the newscast stressing at least a medium level, more than 40% said they do not try to avoid them at all. Nearly 24% found it much addictive. Women and younger individuals reported more FOMO, stress, and addiction. More than 70% reported experiencing at least one anxiety symptom, and 21% of all four. Linear regression explained 42.9% of the variance of reported anxiety, with gender, age, news stress, addiction, and FOMO as predictors. The current study results show an increase in all measurements compared to a separate study conducted using the same tools in 2014. Jewish Israelis struggled with news consumption during the recent war, harming mental health. Heightened anxiety was observed, compared to 2014, and affected all demographics.

Mixed-methods study of university students' perceptions of COVID-19 and media consumption from March 2020 -April 2022

Longitudinal mixed-methods research is necessary to understand the changing dynamics of pandemic perceptions, the adoption of health behaviours, and use of media during a public health emergency. During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we used a mixed-methods approach to survey young adults attending a large Canadian public university. Six online convenience survey samples were collected (Spring 2020, Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022) (n = 4932) and 110 semi-structured interviews were conducted. Female gender was associated with higher perceptions of severity, susceptibility, and the adoption of new health behaviours. Perceptions of severity and anxiety/fear about contracting COVID-19 after reading/hearing a news report decreased overall over time, while perceptions of susceptibility increased through time overall. Social media was the most used form of media and was the form of media that participants judged to make them feel most anxious/fearful about contracting COVID-19. Those who felt anxious after hearing a COVID-19 news report were 8.43 times more likely to judge COVID-19 as severe and 2.07 times more likely to judge their own susceptibility as high. Interviews revealed perceptions of information overload, passive information intake, and a narrowed geographical focus over time. The decrease in judgements of COVID-19 severity with the accompanying increase in judgements of susceptibility over the first two years of the pandemic demonstrate the dynamics of changing pandemic attitudes. Health communication efforts targeting university students in future major health events need to consider these shifting dynamics and ensure that health information distributed via social media meets the needs of university students.

Viral Transmission? A Longitudinal Study of Media Use and Its Relation to Mental Strain During the First 2 Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND

In light of the dynamic COVID-19 pandemic, the exposure to pandemic-related media coverage may change over time and may be particularly relevant due to associations with psychopathological symptoms. The aims of the present study were to examine changes in media consumption over time and to analyze its prospective associations with psychological strain.

METHOD

The study uses a longitudinal observational design with ten periods of online data collection from March 2020 to April 2022 in an adult convenience sample (N = 8337) of the general population in Germany.

RESULTS

Our data revealed that the frequency and duration of pandemic-related media exposure as well as their subjective critical evaluation showed the highest levels at the beginning of the pandemic and peaked again in autumn 2020 and spring 2021. The primarily used media formats changed only slightly over time. The amount of media exposure at baseline was associated with more impairing pandemic-related anxiety 1 month, 1 year, and 2 years later.

CONCLUSION

Our results hint to potentially problematical and long-lasting associations of pandemic-related media consumption with mental strain. Our findings could serve as an orientation for recommendations, further research, and adequate interventions for a responsible dealing with media coverage.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

The authors have pre-registered this research at clinicaltrials.gov without an analysis plan; retrievable at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04331106 .

Music emotion recognition based on temporal convolutional attention network using EEG

Music is one of the primary ways to evoke human emotions. However, the feeling of music is subjective, making it difficult to determine which emotions music triggers in a given individual. In order to correctly identify emotional problems caused by different types of music, we first created an electroencephalogram (EEG) data set stimulated by four different types of music (fear, happiness, calm, and sadness). Secondly, the differential entropy features of EEG were extracted, and then the emotion recognition model CNN-SA-BiLSTM was established to extract the temporal features of EEG, and the recognition performance of the model was improved by using the global perception ability of the self-attention mechanism. The effectiveness of the model was further verified by the ablation experiment. The classification accuracy of this method in the valence and arousal dimensions is 93.45% and 96.36%, respectively. By applying our method to a publicly available EEG dataset DEAP, we evaluated the generalization and reliability of our method. In addition, we further investigate the effects of different EEG bands and multi-band combinations on music emotion recognition, and the results confirm relevant neuroscience studies. Compared with other representative music emotion recognition works, this method has better classification performance, and provides a promising framework for the future research of emotion recognition system based on brain computer interface.

Social Media Behaviors and Lifestyle Changes in Young Adults (Ages 18-28 years) During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis From an International Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND

Screen time (ST), mainly social media (SM), has increased during the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, impacting mental and physical health. This study aims to analyze SM use in young adults ages 18 to 28 years and lifestyle changes during COVID-19 to provide a baseline on pandemic habits in the younger population.

METHODS

An international cross-sectional observational study was conducted from September 2020 to January 2021. Participants responded about their SM behavior, and activities they noticed they did less and more during COVID-19. A total of 183 responses were analyzed.

RESULTS

The top reason respondents increased SM was for entertainment. Many respondents increased ST, physical activity (PA), and sleeping habits during COVID-19, while many decreased socialization, PA, and going outdoors. PA had mixed results among participants, indicating some increased PA and some decreased. Evidence suggests that timing of quarantining during the pandemic significantly influenced variables, like ST (P = .004) and socialization (P = .037).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Respondents generally noticed increased SM use for various reasons, including socialization, potentially explaining why respondents feel they socialize less. ST use increased; some people reported increased PA while others reported a decrease. Altogether, this provides vital context on young adults' SM and lifestyle habits, highlighting potential areas for further research.

Adolescent co-researchers identified the central role of social media for young people during the pandemic

AIM

To test the method of engaging co-researcher adolescents in data collection and explore stated motives for their selection of social media material related to COVID-19.

METHODS

Twenty-three adolescents, 13-19-years old, in Sweden participated as co-researchers collecting material from their social media related to COVID-19. Specifically, they motivated their selection of social media material in field notes. Their motives were explored using content analysis.

RESULTS

Adolescent co-researchers understood and performed the task well, providing insight into the social media exchanges of adolescents during the pandemic. An overarching theme for the motivation for their selection emerged: Social media is an important tool for adolescents' communication and information exchange during COVID-19. Four categories were identified: Keeping track of the talk of the town; Recognition of personally relevant topics; Adolescents as information consumers; Social media as a means for expressing feelings, advice and existential reflections. Co-researchers reported challenges relating to the quality of pandemic-related information available to adolescents.

CONCLUSION

Including young people as co-researchers on matters relevant to them was successful. This study also underlines the need to consider the role of social media in information exchange during crises and to co-produce health communication with adolescents to meet their specific needs.

“It’s important to manage our stress”: Mental health advice in the Australian print news media during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened existing concerns about mental health and illness in Australia. The news media is an important source of health information, but there has been little research into how advice about mental health is communicated to the public via the news media. In this study, we examined how advice about building and maintaining mental health was discursively constructed in the news media during the COVID-19 pandemic. A discourse analytic approach informed by critical discursive psychology was employed to analyse 436 articles published in daily newspapers in Australia between 1 January and 31 December 2020, which contained references to mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic. Three main interpretative repertoires were identified – negative emotions are a risk to mental health and must be managed; risky emotions should be managed by being controlled (based around a ‘border control’ metaphor); and risky emotions should be managed by being released (based around a ‘pressure cooker’ metaphor). This study demonstrates that, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, advice constructed negative emotions as risky and problematic; and normalized the habitual management of emotions by individuals through strategies of control and release. Potential implications of such discourses for goals of improving population mental health are discussed.

Adherence to COVID-19 health protocols in an online news context in the Philippines: A manifest content analysis

OBJECTIVES

Globally, adherence to COVID-19 health and safety protocols played a crucial role in preventing the spread of the virus. Thus, this study analyzed online news articles reporting adherence to COVID-19 health and safety protocols in the Philippines.

DESIGN

Manifest content analysis.

SAMPLE

News articles (n = 192) from three major online news portals in the Philippines.

MEASUREMENT

Published online news articles were collected during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020 to March 2021). Bengtsson's content analysis approach was used to analyze the data. Member-checking and intercoder reliability validated the study's results.

RESULTS

Three main themes emerged: (a) adherence, (b) non-adherence, and (c) partial adherence. The subthemes were labeled who, what, when, where, and why. The same behavior, social distancing, was the most adhered to and non-adhered COVID-19 health protocol. This protocol has the highest occurrences in political protest, religious-related activities, and self-initiated quarantine. Leisure activities both showed non-adherence and partial adherence.

CONCLUSIONS

Online news articles depicted Filipinos' adherence to health and safety protocols. Their adherence was primarily determined by one's group or community, social norms, and values. The government and its public health agencies should strengthen current efforts and continuously re-evaluate existing policies to modify ineffective and confusing safety health protocols.

The Impact of Information About COVID-19 on the Endocrine Stress System and Cognitive Distortions

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is one of the major health concerns worldwide affecting not only human physical health but also contributing to the development of many mental disorders including impairment of the cognitive function. It is highly conceivable that elevation of the stress hormones, i.e., glucocorticoids and catecholamines, due to the infection, as well as the presence of psychosocial stressors, such as COVID-19 information, play a critical role in the development of these disorders. In the present study, the potential impact of exposure to COVID-19 information on the cognitive distortion and stress levels was analyzed in a population of 32 first-year medical sciences students using the stress assessment questionnaire (SAQ) and the posttraumatic cognitions inventory (PTCI) surveys. Both surveys demonstrated no acute change in the stress and post-traumatic cognition levels between medical sciences students who were either exposed or not to information about COVID-19. Interestingly, analysis of the stress and cognition points across the first and second measurements of the SAQ categories revealed a significant change in the control group but not in the experimental group. In addition, there was no significant difference among groups when considering the time*group factor. To conclude, we found that exposure to information about COVID-19 did not contribute acutely to cognitive distortion and stress levels among participating students. The previous exposure to COVID-19-related information from media and living during the COVID-19 pandemic era might have enhanced the awareness of the students to the situation.

Media consumption and psychological distress among older adults in the United States

The consumption of news media covering national and global events, particularly those that invoke fear or worry, such as pandemics or terrorist attacks, may affect older adults' mental wellbeing. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, this research analyzes nationally representative data from older adults in the US to address the following research questions: (1) What is the relationship between COVID-19-based media consumption and psychological distress? (2) Does any relationship between media consumption and psychological distress vary by gender, race/ethnicity, education, and marital status? Results indicate that (1) older adults who closely followed the news about the pandemic scored higher on psychological distress than those following less closely and (2) this relationship was more pronounced among Hispanic older adults. These findings are contextualized in the broader stress process model with a focus on a macro-level stressor and differential exposure and vulnerability resulting in variability in the relationship between the stressor and psychological distress.

Differential impact on suicide mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

OBJECTIVES

To compare suicide rates observed in Brazil after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with the estimated rate based on suicide deaths between 2010 and 2020, and identify sociodemographic variables associated with this outcome.

METHODS

Ecological time-series study. Data were obtained from Brazilian Unified Health System Department of Information Technology (DATASUS), with the structural break of the data set in March 2020. The number of actual suicides observed and the number of expected suicides if there were no COVID-19 pandemic were analyzed through bayesian structural time series modeling.

RESULTS

The overall incidence of suicides in Brazil remained stable after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to what would be expected. However, there was a significant increase in suicide deaths among women (6.9%) and older adult (9.1%). Analysis by macro-regions of the country showed significant increases in suicide deaths in the Center-West (7.4%), Northeast (5.7%), and Southeast (10%). Stratified analyses revealed differences according to age, sex, education, and skin color.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite stability in the overall number of suicides, this phenomenon occurs heterogeneously among different population groups and regions of Brazil. Rates have increased in populations with a history of poor access to health, which may have been more severely impacted by the pandemic.

Valence-arousal classification of emotion evoked by Chinese ancient-style music using 1D-CNN-BiLSTM model on EEG signals for college students

During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are using multimedia content more frequently to communicate with each other on Internet platforms. Among them, music, as psychological support for a lonely life in this special period, is a powerful tool for emotional self-regulation and getting rid of loneliness. More and more attention has been paid to the music recommender system based on emotion. In recent years, Chinese music has tended to be considered an independent genre. Chinese ancient-style music is one of the new folk music styles in Chinese music and is becoming more and more popular among young people. The complexity of Chinese-style music brings significant challenges to the quantitative calculation of music. To effectively solve the problem of emotion classification in music information search, emotion is often characterized by valence and arousal. This paper focuses on the valence and arousal classification of Chinese ancient-style music-evoked emotion. It proposes a hybrid one-dimensional convolutional neural network and bidirectional and unidirectional long short-term memory model (1D-CNN-BiLSTM). And a self-acquisition EEG dataset for Chinese college students was designed to classify music-induced emotion by valence-arousal based on EEG. In addition to that, the proposed 1D-CNN-BILSTM model verified the performance of public datasets DEAP and DREAMER, as well as the self-acquisition dataset DESC. The experimental results show that, compared with traditional LSTM and 1D-CNN-LSTM models, the proposed method has the highest accuracy in the valence classification task of music-induced emotion, reaching 94.85%, 98.41%, and 99.27%, respectively. The accuracy of the arousal classification task also gained 93.40%, 98.23%, and 99.20%, respectively. In addition, compared with the positive valence classification results of emotion, this method has obvious advantages in negative valence classification. This study provides a computational classification model for a music recommender system with emotion. It also provides some theoretical support for the brain-computer interactive (BCI) application products of Chinese ancient-style music which is popular among young people.

Infodemic and fake news - A comprehensive overview of its global magnitude during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021: A scoping review

The spread of fake news increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. This study aims to synthesize the extant literature to understand the magnitude of this phenomenon in the wake of the pandemic in 2021, focusing on the motives and sociodemographic profiles, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tools developed, and the top trending topics related to fake news. A scoping review was adopted targeting articles published in five academic databases (January 2021-November 2021), resulting in 97 papers. Most of the studies were empirical in nature (N = 69) targeting the general population (N = 26) and social media users (N = 13), followed by AI-based detection tools (N = 27). Top motives for fake news sharing include low awareness, knowledge, and health/media literacy, Entertainment/Pass Time/Socialization, Altruism, and low trust in government/news media, whilst the phenomenon was more prominent among those with low education, males and younger. Machine and deep learning emerged to be the widely explored techniques in detecting fake news, whereas top topics were related to vaccine, virus, cures/remedies, treatment, and prevention. Immediate intervention and prevention efforts are needed to curb this anti-social behavior considering the world is still struggling to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

The Mental Health Impact of Daily News Exposure During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

BACKGROUND

Consumption of distressing news media, which substantially increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, has demonstrable negative effects on mental health.

OBJECTIVE

This study examines the proximal impact of daily exposure to news about COVID-19 on mental health in the first year of the pandemic.

METHODS

A sample of 546 college students completed daily ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) for 8 weeks, measuring exposure to news about COVID-19, worry and optimism specifically related to COVID-19, hopelessness, and general worry.

RESULTS

Participants completed >80,000 surveys. Multilevel mediation models indicated that greater daily exposure to news about COVID-19 is associated with higher same-day and next-day worry about the pandemic. Elevations in worry specifically about COVID-19 were in turn associated with greater next-day hopelessness and general worry. Optimism about COVID-19 mediated the relationship between daily exposure to COVID-19 news and next-day general worry but was not related to hopelessness.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates the mental health impact of daily exposure to COVID-19 news and highlights how worry about the pandemic contributes over time to hopelessness and general worry.

Occupational Therapy-Based Energy Management Education in People with Post-COVID-19 Condition-Related Fatigue: Results from a Focus Group Discussion

Persons with post-COVID-19 conditions have prolonged symptoms and longer-term consequences which can prevent them from returning to previous everyday functioning. Fatigue is the most frequent symptom reported in literature. Occupational therapists (OTs) are specialized in client-centered problem analysis, counseling, and education to recover occupational engagement and performance in everyday life. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, OTs have been challenged to respond with services adequate to the needs of this patient group. Energy management education (EME) was initially developed for persons with multiple sclerosis-related fatigue and then made independent of diagnosis suitable to persons living with chronic disease-related fatigue. EME, a structured self-management education, is becoming a part of the new services. This study was aimed at exploring the initial experiences of OTs using the EME protocol and materials with persons with postacute COVID-19 and/or post-COVID-19 condition-related fatigue and gathering their recommendations for improvements and adaptions. One online focus group discussion took place in May 2021 with OTs experienced in using the EME protocol. The topics addressed were the institutional context of the OTs and their experiences during the treatment. A thematic analysis was performed. According to nine OTs working in different settings in Switzerland, the EME protocol is exploitable in both in- and outpatient settings and was judged appropriate by them, even if the EME materials can be improved. The main challenges for the OTs were the short period their patients had lived with fatigue; the discrepancy between self-concept, self-perception, and performance; and the insecurity, fear, and anxiety related to recovery. Further research is needed to include the perspective of EME participants and to measure quantitative outcomes such as fatigue impact, self-efficacy, occupational performance, and quality of life. Until the existing EME protocol is improved, it is applicable to persons with post-COVID-19 condition-related fatigue.

Emotional State of Mexican University Students in the COVID-19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND

Since the WHO declared the COVID-19 crisis a pandemic in March 2020, the young population is suffering from a range of psychological symptoms. The present study measured symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression in university students of Saltillo, Mexico, using the Depression and Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21).

METHODS

The DASS-21 scale and an ad hoc questionnaire were used to collect sociodemographic information.

RESULTS

The results show that the students who participated in this study suffer from high levels of stress, anxiety and depression. In terms of sociodemographic variables, women, people suffering from a chronic disease and people living with a chronic disease had the highest levels of stress, anxiety and depression, and people who live with a chronically ill person, people who have had the COVID-19 disease and those who have had someone close to them fall sick have had more stress, anxiety and depression than the rest. Another finding of the present study is that university students who believe that others comply with COVID-19 safety measures have significantly lower anxiety and depression than those who believe that others do not comply.

CONCLUSIONS

It is concluded that university students are a psychologically vulnerable group in the face of the pandemic.