JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic social media has fulfilled a necessary role in aiding individuals’ understanding of and coping with the public health emergency as a way of communication, venue for entertainment, and a channel for information dissemination.

Objective:

Due to the growing and evolving utilization of social media, the present study aims to assess the associations between social media use and COVID-19 prevention guidelines knowledge, perceptions, and self-reported adherence.

Methods:

Methodology – An online survey was distributed to adults in the United States through the Qualtrics platform, from March 15th to 23rd, 2022, to assess frequency of social media use, social media sources of COVID-19 information, as well as knowledge of, perceptions of, and level of self-reported adherence to COVID-19 prevention guidelines. The survey, using quota sampling methods, yielded 1,042 responses. Three linear regression models were run to analyze the associations between key outcomes (i.e., knowledge of, perceptions of, and self-reported adherence to COVID-19 prevention guidelines) and social media use when controlling for basic demographics and vaccination uptake.

Results:

Findings –Usage of the social media platform TikTok (B=-0.31, P=0.03) was associated with a lower knowledge of COVID-19 guidelines. Usage of the social media sites Instagram (B=-0.33, P=0.02) and Twitter (B=-0.28, P=0.02) was associated with stricter perceptions of the guidelines.

Conclusions:

Discussion – These results demonstrate the complex interactions between online and physical environments justifying a call for, while serving to inform, health communication strategies and interventions. The findings of this work demonstrate a need for public health interventions tailored to subpopulations based on demographic background and social media site usage. This is in efforts to inform misinformation prevention and regulation, in addition to digital public health policy more broadly, in the interest of increasing pandemic related knowledge, bolstering perceptions, and maintaining or increasing adherence to COVID-19 prevention guidelines. Originality – This work is innovative as it leverages a short, online survey to assess knowledge of, perceptions of, and adherence to COVID-19 guidelines through a quota-based sample of the United States during the pandemic.