. Uma Phalswal; . Vani Pujari; . Rasmita Sethi; . Ranjana Verma
Volume 13, Issue 1 , January 2023, , Pages 1-12
Abstract
During the COVID‑19 pandemic, people are using social media more than usual routine because theyrely on online sources to seek health information for themselves and their loved ones. ...
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During the COVID‑19 pandemic, people are using social media more than usual routine because theyrely on online sources to seek health information for themselves and their loved ones. The spread ofinaccurate and misleading information via social media has a number of detrimental psychologicaleffects on members of society. The aim of this systematic review was to describe the impact of socialmedia on the mental health of the general population. An extensive systematic search was done till thelast month of 2021 for collecting the evidence using the PRISMA technique. The search was mainlyfocused on the article leading with keywords and search engines used during the course of the studywere Pubmed, Semantic Scholar, Mendeley, and Science direct. Articles for this study were selectedbased on the predetermined eligibility criteria and performed quality assessment by using the NHLBIquality assessment tool. Most of the studies included in this review are found fair (score between9 and 12) quality. Out of 866 publications, 533 articles were included in the initial screening, afterduplication removal 46 full‑text articles were assessed for eligibility and 14 studies were selected forsystematic review. In most of the studies, maximum participants used social media as a primary sourceof information. Relatively high rates of symptoms of depression (14.14% to 48.3%), anxiety (7.4% to47.82%), and prevalence of stress increased to 37.67% are reported after exposure to social mediafor coverage of COVID‑19 news in the general population. Risk factors of psychological distress areassociated with female gender, younger age group, marital status, staying alone, and duration ofexposure to mass media. Increased exposure to COVID‑19 information through mass/social mediais associated with highly significant levels of psychological health issues; mitigating the hazardouseffect of social media exposure during the COVID‑19 pandemic on the psychological health of thegeneral population is an international public health priority.
