Media Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Throughout the pandemic, the general population was encouraged to use media to be kept informed about sanitary measures while staying connected with others to obtain social support. However, due to mixed findings in the literature, it is not clear whether media use in such a context would be pathogenic or salutogenic. Objective: Therefore, the associations between COVID-19-related stressors and frequency of media use for information-seeking on trauma- and stressor-related (TSR) symptoms were examined while also investigating how social media use for support-seeking and peritraumatic distress interact with those variables. Methods: A path model was tested in a sample of 5913 adults who completed an online survey. Results: The number of COVID-19-related stressors (β=.25; P