Liu Hongfei, Liu Wentong, Yoganathan Vignesh, Osburg Victoria-Sophie
Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, No.182 Nanhu Avenue, Wuhan, Hubei 430076, China.
Technol Forecast Soc Change. 2021 May;166:120600. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120600. Epub 2021 Jan 14.
While previous research highlights the benefits of social media in times of a pandemic, this research focuses on the potential dark side of social media use among Generation Z (Gen Z) in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown between March and May 2020. The study reveals that COVID-19 information overload through social media had a negative impact on Gen Z social media users' psychological well-being. Moreover, perceived information overload heightened both social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19, which, in turn, increased users' social media discontinuance intention. In addition, considering that social media is the predominant method of maintaining connectivity with others for Gen Z users during the lockdown, the fear of missing out (FoMO) buffered the impact of social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19 on Gen Z users' social media discontinuance intention. Our research adds a hitherto underexplored perspective to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's mental health. We offer a series of practical suggestions for social media users, social media platform providers, and health officials, institutions, and organizations in the effective and sustainable use of social media during the global COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic time.
虽然先前的研究强调了社交媒体在疫情期间的益处，但本研究聚焦于2020年3月至5月英国新冠疫情封锁期间Z世代（Gen Z）使用社交媒体的潜在负面影响。该研究表明，社交媒体上新冠疫情信息过载对Z世代社交媒体用户的心理健康产生了负面影响。此外，感知到的信息过载加剧了社交媒体疲劳和对新冠疫情的恐惧，进而增加了用户停用社交媒体的意愿。此外，考虑到在封锁期间社交媒体是Z世代用户与他人保持联系的主要方式，错失恐惧（FoMO）缓冲了社交媒体疲劳和对新冠疫情的恐惧对Z世代用户停用社交媒体意愿的影响。我们的研究为新冠疫情对年轻人心理健康的影响增添了一个此前未充分探索的视角。我们为社交媒体用户、社交媒体平台提供商以及卫生官员、机构和组织提供了一系列实用建议，以在全球新冠疫情期间及疫情后有效且可持续地使用社交媒体。
