The influence of social media use on anxiety level of college students during regular epidemic prevention and control

Abstract

This study employed the Multidimensional Scale for Social Website Use (MSFU) and the Self-Assessment Scale for Anxiety (SAS) to assess 302 college students online to determine the association between social media use and anxiety status among students during a time of routine epidemic preparedness. The findings showed that anxiety disorders affected 36.88% of college students, and that active social media use was strongly and favorably related to those disorders. This paper conducted in-depth interviews with 10 college students who were either isolated at home or closed to school as a result of the epidemic in order to further investigate the changes in the causes of anxiety among college students during the regular epidemic prevention and control period and the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.The findings of the interviews suggested that information overload and redundancy, changes in the social environment, and variances in individual requirements could all be contributing cause