People’s Perspectives on Social Media Use during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In this paper, we explore people's perceptions and usage of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it had changed compared to the pre-pandemic times. As salient findings, we report increased activity in social media, which followed both from the increased opportunity to spend time in social media, the need to be socially connected, and the motivation to follow pandemic related updates. The perceived emerging content visible in social media postings were face masks, home and outdoors activities, remote events, and different challenges. Social media also made people aware of the divided opinions related to the pandemic, and could lead to more careful self-censoring of own postings. Our study is based on interviews of 29 and online survey of 172 people.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing.

Social networking use, mental health, and quality of life of Hong Kong adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In terms of theory, the present findings provide insights into the positive side of SNSs use by youths and their improved well-being, and thus contribute to the current literature, which has mainly highlighted the negative effects of SNSs usage on young people's mental health ( 79 – 81 ). Especially under the particular circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, appropriate use of SNSs can help young people to maintain their mental health through fulfilling their need to be socially connected and their desire to follow pandemic-related updates ( 82 ). Our findings also add to the existing knowledge by identifying an ideal range for the daily amount of time (from somewhat <1–3 h) that an adolescent can spend on SNSs without causing evident adverse effects on their well-being.…”

Effects of Gender and Social Network Use on High School Students’ Emotional Well-Being during COVID-19

“…Generally, the intensity of internet use increased during the pandemic [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. At the beginning of 2023, shortly before the official declaration of the end of the pandemic in May [31], there were a total of about 5.16 billion active internet users (about 65% of the world's population) and about 4.76 billion active users of at least one social network (59.5% of the world's population) [32], representing a significant increase when compared with the 2020 data.…”