The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a global emergency, affecting millions of individuals both physically and psychologically. The present research investigated the associations between social media exposure and depression during the COVID-19 outbreak by examining the mediating role of psychological distress and the moderating role of emotion regulation among members of the general public in China. Participants (N = 485) completed a set of questionnaires online, including demographic information, self-rated physical health, and social media exposure to topics related to COVID-19. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) were utilized to measure psychological distress about COVID-19, depression, and emotion regulation strategies, respectively. Results found that older age and greater levels of social media exposure were associated with more psychological distress about the virus (r = 0.14, p = 0.003; r = 0.22, p < 0.001). Results of the moderated mediation model suggest that psychological distress mediated the relationship between social media exposure and depression (β = 0.10; Boot 95% CI = 0.07, 0.15). Furthermore, expressive suppression moderated the relationship between psychological distress and depression (β = 0.10, p = 0.017). The findings are discussed in terms of the need for mental health assistance for individuals at high risk of depression, including the elderly and individuals who reported greater psychological distress and those who showed preference usage of suppression, during the COVID-19 crisis.
As a crucial living environment, the Internet shapes cognition. The Internet provides massive information that can be accessed quickly via hyperlinks, but the information is typically fragmentary and concrete rather than integrative. According to construal level theory, the processing of this concrete and fragmentary information, should reduce attentional scope. Two experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, three groups of participants were asked to shop online, read magazines or have a rest respectively, and a divided attention Navon-letter task was employed to measure the attentional scope before and after the assigned activity. It was found that the difference between reaction times in response to local vs. global targets was decreased only after Internet use, while there was no decrease in either the reading or resting group. In Experiment 2, the same procedure was used, and EEG/ERP methods were used to record both behavioral response and neural activity. Results showed that before the assigned activity, there was no significant difference in N2 amplitude in response to local vs. global targets in any of the three groups; during the activity, the lower-alpha activity induced by Internet use was significantly lower than that induced by reading or resting; after the activity, correspondingly, a more negative N2 wave was induced by the global than local targets only in the Internet group, while there were no significant differences in the other groups. Consistent with construal level theory, the results suggest that when surfing the Internet, attentional scope is reduced, and this effect might continue after Internet activity.
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