Sleep Quality in Relation with Cyberchondria Among Young Adults During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

According to the United Nations third sustainable development goal, ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being of all at all ages is essential. Currently, COVID-19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis and causing considerable psychological and physical distress as well as high mortality rates across the world. Recently, the internet has rapidly become the major source of health related information among the general public. This behavior of searching the internet for the common symptoms has increased during this pandemic due to the fear of uncertainty. However, the excessive and compulsive use of the internet for health information leads to a phenomenon termed as cyberchondria. It is defined as an increase in anxiety about one’s own health status as a result of excessive online searches. The increase in anxiety and distress has an impact in the sleep quality among individuals. Hence, the present study aims to focus on cyberchondria during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it is affecting the sleep quality among young adults. Simple random sampling technique has been administered to collect the data. Participants (N=123) responded to the Cyberchondria Severity Scale short-form (CSS-12), Sleep Quality scale (SQS-28), and the demographic data. Results revealed that all the four dimensions of cyberchondria and the overall score showed significant positive relationship with all other factors and overall score of sleep quality except the factor, difficulty getting up. Further, young adults having high level cyberchondria are highly responsible for more variance in sleep quality other than young adults having low level cyberchondria.