When the antidote is the poison: Investigating the relationship between people's social media usage and loneliness when face-to-face communication is restricted.

ABSTRACT: When governments mandated lockdowns to limit the spread of the coronavirus, the resulting reduction of face-to-face communication threatened many people's psychological well-being by fostering feelings of loneliness. Given social media's eponymous social nature, we study the relationship between people's social media usage and their loneliness during these times of physical social restrictions. We contrast literature highlighting the social value of social media with a competing logic based on the "internet paradox," according to which increased social media usage may paradoxically be associated with increasing, not decreasing, levels of loneliness. As the extant literature provides opposing correlational insights into the general relationship of social media usage and loneliness, we offer

SUBMITTER: Jutte D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10857570 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature