Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 22, 2020
Date Accepted: Dec 14, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 15, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Risk-Exposure and Time-Displacement Effects of Internet Use and Depression during the COVID-19 Stay-at-home Period: A Prospective Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
COVID-19 has spread like wildfire across the globe, prompting many governments to impose unprecedented stay-at-home orders to limit its transmission. During an extended stay-at-home period, individuals may spend more leisure time than usual on the Internet and thus become more vulnerable to Internet use-related problems.
Objective:
Objectives: The objectives of this study were to (1) examine the amount of leisure time allocated to Internet use relative to offline activities during the COVID-19 stay-at-home period; (2) assess the prevalence of probable depression and its association with psychosocial risk (cyberbullying victimization) and resource (social support) factors; and (3) explain the positive link between leisure-time Internet use and depression through cyberbullying victimization (risk exposure hypothesis) and social support (time displacement hypothesis).
Methods:
Methods:
This study took place from March to May 2020 during the early stage of the pandemic. The study adopted a prospective design, with an online survey administered to 573 U.K. and 474 U.S. adult residents at two assessment points two months apart.
Results:
Results:
The participants spent an average of 6.11 hours (bootstrap BCa 95% CI: 5.87–6.35) on leisure-time Internet use in a typical day during the stay-at-home period. The prevalence of moderate-to-severe depression was 36% (bootstrap BCa 95% CI: 33%–39%) at Time 1 and 28% (bootstrap BCa 95% CI: 25%–30%) at the follow-up. Time 2 depression was positively associated with both leisure-time Internet use and cyberbullying victimization but inversely associated with perceived support from family and friends assessed at Time 1 (unstandardized bs ranging from -0.47–0. 58, ps < 0.05). The findings further revealed cyberbullying victimization and perceived family support to exert parallel mediation effects on the association between leisure-time Internet use and depression, providing support for both the risk exposure and time displacement hypotheses of Internet use.
Conclusions:
Conclusion: During the extended stay-at-home period in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.K. and U.S. residents generally spent large amounts of their leisure time on the Internet, and the prevalence of probable depression during the two-month study period was high. The experience of depression can be explained by leisure-time Internet use, which increased the exposure to cyberbullying victimization and displaced time for family support.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.