“…Based on the objectives of this study, our first finding suggests that increasing use of social media was related to high rate of fear of COVID-19 amongst students. This finding corroborates with a wide range of studies that have reported the positive links of problematic social media usage with negative mental health outcomes during the early days of the pandemic, including increasing fear of COVID-19 [11,29,38], perceived threat and panic of COVID-19 [24,60], emotional loneliness [9,61], psychological distress, anxiety, and depression [10,43,62]. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, and due to limited movements and social restrictions, there has been a record surge in the use of social media among the youth to gather and share information about the pandemic, communicate with loved ones, to study and finish assignments, among others [63].…”