About half of us say our mental health is worse now than pre-Coronavirus, and it gets worse as you consume more televised and online news. Interestingly, the worst social platform for mental health was not the most popular social media site, Facebook.
Rather, it was Reddit.
Social media platforms for COVID-19 news: Reddit is associated with the worst mental health changes.
57.6% of people who use Reddit as their primary social platform for COVID-19 news say their mental health is now worse. 19.8% say it’s the same, and 22.6% say it’s better.
On average, we’re now spending 53 minutes a day consuming news coverage, according to the survey of 1,009 people by streaming media service Flixed. That’s up 22 minutes a day. Women have increased their news consumption the most, almost doubling from 27.9 minutes per day pre-pandemic to 53.7 minutes per day now.
Unfortunately, the more you watch news on TV or read it online, the more likely you are to feel worse now.
“Individuals reporting their mental health had declined since the start of 2020 watched an average of 73 minutes of news or online content each day,” the Flixed study says. “On the other hand, those who felt their mental health had improved since the start of 2020 watched only about an hour of news each day.”
And, they set time limits on new consumption.
rimary social media platforms for COVID-19 news.
Facebook was the top platform for Coronavirus news consumption, according to the study, with 35.8% saying it was their primary social media source of COVID-19 news. 17% said Twitter was their top source, while 16.3% said it was YouTube.
YouTube was the only major social platform for which the survey respondents said their mental health improved when it was their major source of news.
While just 12.4% used Reddit as their primary social source of COVID-19 news, Reddit was not good for their self-reported mental health. Almost 60% said their mental health was worse, compared to 41.6% for Facebook and 43% for Twitter. 32.3% of those who used YouTube as their primary social source of Coronavirus news said their mental health was worse, but 46.6% of the YouTube watchers said it was better.
The challenges we all have with COVID-19 news: what’s true, what’s false, when to re-open, and what’s effective medically against the virus. In a highly politicized and fast-moving scientific setting, there’s a lot of room for disagreement. And when that disagreement has life-or-death consequences plus significant personal economic consequences ... it’s no wonder that disagreement sometimes gets personal and angry.
Why is Reddit the worst, according to the study?
According to the authors, fake news:
“The platform has long been fertile ground for conspiracy theories, and its leadership has resisted the active moderation measures adopted by competitors,” Flixed.io says. “Across a diffuse array of subreddits, troubling and misleading posts continue to proliferate, despite the best efforts of some well-intentioned moderators.”
The challenge, of course, is knowing what’s true and what’s fake.
And while it might be fairly easy to disprove a link between 5G and Coronavirus (countries without 5G still have the virus) other conspiracy theories like those around the origins of the pandemic, the reasons for the lockdown, or the causes of deaths reported as COVID-19 related are more murky.
And, seem to have a lot to do with which side of the political fence you sit on.
The full report will be available from Flixed here.
