MARCIA HUNT
Special to The Leader
It would take you less than five minutes of scrolling through Twitter to find posts about the global coronavirus pandemic.
And this is understandable — these are unprecedented times.
Social media has given people everywhere the ability to put their feelings of fear, frustration and anxiety out into the digital universe with very little censorship.
The misuse of words by people we follow can cause excessive anxiety and drain us of optimism.
Health professionals are examining just how social media use during a crisis can damage your mental health and what to do to prevent this.
Psychologists have been studying the effects of social media on the public for a long time.
According to an excerpt from Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver and E. Alison Holman in a journal for the American Psychological Association, “Researchers have found that when people were exposed to several hours of daily media during the ebola outbreak in 2014, they were more likely to experience increased distress and worry, as well as poorer functioning over time compared with people who consumed less media.”
This means that constantly watching the news or scrolling through Twitter for coronavirus updates can actually do more harm than good and may even affect your success in other areas where cognitive health is important (like your online classes).
To combat this, Garfin, Silver and Holman suggest that you only read the stories with “critical updates” and avoid reading every article you can find on the subject.
Repeatedly exposing yourself to the same information will only cause your anxiety to grow.
There is also the problem of misinformation in the media, especially since nearly every news outlet is publishing coronavirus-related content.
News can undeniably be sensational; the more shocking a headline is, the more inclined you are to read it, which means more traffic for the news website.
Finding trustworthy information is daunting when there is so much conflicting information vying for your attention.
Psychologists urge the public to rely primarily on information from the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as those are the resources that have the best access to information that is both up to date and provided by health professionals.
This way, you don’t accidentally fill your mind with or share over-exaggerated, harmful information.
Because words can spread so quickly, the smartest thing you can do is be more conscious about where you’re getting your information and, honestly, just being more mindful about what you post.
This pandemic has caused different levels of damage to everyone’s mental health, and the things you post about the coronavirus may end up being really harmful not only to others, but to yourself.
Being more selective about where you get your information is not a detriment to you, even if it is a bit more time consuming; media literacy is being forgotten in an era when it’s the most important.
The reality of the situation is that the coronavirus pandemic is a traumatic world event that will have a lasting mark on history.
This is the sort of stuff that gets studied by health professionals and written into social studies textbooks.
Do you want our generation to be immortalized by our intellectual, helpful or positive response to the pandemic?
Or would you rather be a cautionary tale about propaganda and the media during a time that people need to be united most?
The health professionals said it best: spend time away from your phone and think before you post.