Abstract
Background: The isolation due to early coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) quarantine had people using social media more than ever. Yet, there had been contradictory claims regarding the effect of social media use on mental health. To have a comprehensive rationale for resolving conflicting claims about mental health, we aimed to summarize the association between the time spent on social media during COVID-19 quarantine and mental health indicators, including anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. Methods: We included 327 studies from the PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases in our meta-analysis. These studies evaluated the association between social media use and mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, and distress ascertained by a screening tool with a validated cut-off value. Based on how the findings were presented in the original studies, we summarized the final 14 studies in terms of the odds ratios (ORs), regression coefficient (beta), and correlation coefficient (Pearson's r). Data analyses included a random-effect model and an assessment of inter-study heterogeneity. Findings: The time spent on social media was significantly associated with clinical anxiety and depression (anxiety: OR = 1·55, 95% CI: 1·31–1·83, I2 = 26·77%; Depression: OR = 1·43, 95% CI 1·14–1·80, I2 = 67·16%). However, no significant association was found in psychological distress (β = 0·09, 95% CI -0·29–0·46, I2 = 80·53%). Interpretation: Our analysis demonstrated that the time spent on social media was associated with a higher likelihood of anxiety and depression, but no significant association was observed with symptoms of psychological distress. Registration Details: This meta-analysis review was registered with PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/, registration No CRD42021260223, 15 June 2021). Funding Information: This study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Ministry of Science (2020R1C1C1003502), awarded to Sun Jae Jung. Declaration of Interests: None.
Highlights
In the first half-year of the virus pandemic, more than 100 million people were confirmed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and approximately 500 thousand have died [1]
Our analysis demonstrated that the excessive time spent on social media platform was associated with a greater likelihood of having symptoms of anxiety and depression
Each of the final 14 studies measured multiple mental health outcome variables, and pooled effect sized were calculated for each outcome variable
Summary
In the first half-year of the virus pandemic, more than 100 million people were confirmed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and approximately 500 thousand have died [1]. Social media may be helpful for relieving anxiety and depression by providing information regarding the pandemic [6, 7]. Prolonged use of social media by the isolated could be a double-edged sword that can adversely affect mental health due to sustained exposure to excessive information and misinformation [8,9,10]. Public isolated due to the early quarantine regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) increasingly used more social media platforms. Contradictory claims regarding the effect of social media use on mental health needs to be resolved. We aimed to summarise the association between the time spent on social media platform during the COVID-19 quarantine and mental health outcomes (i.e., anxiety and depression)
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