The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic is a salient cause for distress among college students. Studies have indicated that parental support, as well as self-disclosure on social media, can alleviate the negative impacts of stressful life disruptions on students' perceived stress levels. Using survey data collected from a sample of 215 college students from a university in the Southwestern United States, this study examined the stressbuffering effects of self-disclosure on social media and students' perceived support from their parents. The results show that 1) core self-disclosure on social media and 2) support from parent(s) both moderate the level of stress students are experiencing due to life disruptions caused by COVID-19. Therefore, we call for attention to social media's role as an arena for mental health interventions and the importance of parental support for college students in a crisis.
Our study examines Facebook posts containing nine prominent COVID-19 vaccine misinformation topics that circulated on the platform between March 1st, 2020 and March 1st, 2021. We first identify misinformation spreaders and fact checkers, further dividing the latter group into those who repeat misinformation to debunk the false claim and those who share correct information without repeating the misinformation. Our analysis shows that, on Facebook, there are almost as many fact checkers as misinformation spreaders. In particular, fact checkers’ posts that repeat the original misinformation received significantly more comments than posts from misinformation spreaders. However, we found that misinformation spreaders were far more likely to take on central positions in the misinformation URL co-sharing network than fact checkers. This demonstrates the remarkable ability of misinformation spreaders to coordinate communication strategies across topics.
Purpose: We hypothesized that living with a smoker would be positively associated with general and central adiposity among middle-aged and older women. Design: Prospective across up to 8 years. Setting: Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. Sample: A total of 83 492 women (age 50-79 at baseline). Measures: The predictor was living with a smoker at baseline. Outcomes were clinic-assessed obesity and high waist circumference, examined cross-sectionally at baseline and prospectively at year 3 and (for self-reported obesity) year 8. Analysis: All analyses used logistic regression and controlled for sociodemographic factors and participants’ current smoking; prospective analyses also adjusted for baseline obesity or high waist circumference. Results: Living with a smoker was associated (1) cross-sectionally with obesity (n = 82 692, odds ratio [OR] = 1.38, P < .001) and a high waist circumference (n = 83 241, OR = 1.41, P < .001) and (2) prospectively with obesity (n = 68 753, OR = 1.22, P < .001) and a high waist circumference (n = 68 947, OR = 1.22, P < .001) 3 years later and obesity (n = 38 212, OR = 1.21, P < .001) 8 years later. Conclusion: These results document an essentially unrecognized health risk associated with living with a smoker. For practitioners, these findings underscore the need for innovative household-level interventions for families living with a smoker integrating established smoking and obesity prevention efforts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.