COVID-19 information overload and generation Z's social media discontinuance intention during the pandemic lockdown

Hongfei Liu; Wentong Liu; Vignesh Yoganathan; Victoria Sophie Osburg

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120600

COVID-19 information overload and generation Z's social media discontinuance intention during the pandemic lockdown

Hongfei Liu, Wentong Liu^*, Vignesh Yoganathan, Victoria Sophie Osburg

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

289 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

While previous research highlights the benefits of social media in times of a pandemic, this research focuses on the potential dark side of social media use among Generation Z (Gen Z) in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown between March and May 2020. The study reveals that COVID-19 information overload through social media had a negative impact on Gen Z social media users’ psychological well-being. Moreover, perceived information overload heightened both social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19, which, in turn, increased users’ social media discontinuance intention. In addition, considering that social media is the predominant method of maintaining connectivity with others for Gen Z users during the lockdown, the fear of missing out (FoMO) buffered the impact of social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19 on Gen Z users’ social media discontinuance intention. Our research adds a hitherto underexplored perspective to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's mental health. We offer a series of practical suggestions for social media users, social media platform providers, and health officials, institutions, and organizations in the effective and sustainable use of social media during the global COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic time.

Original language	English
Article number	120600
Number of pages	12
Journal	Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Volume	166
Early online date	14 Jan 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120600
Publication status	Published - 1 May 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021

Funding

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Keywords

Fear of COVID-19
Generation Z
Information overload
Mental health
Social media fatigue

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8640972/Licence: CC BY 4.0

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abstract = "While previous research highlights the benefits of social media in times of a pandemic, this research focuses on the potential dark side of social media use among Generation Z (Gen Z) in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown between March and May 2020. The study reveals that COVID-19 information overload through social media had a negative impact on Gen Z social media users{\textquoteright} psychological well-being. Moreover, perceived information overload heightened both social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19, which, in turn, increased users{\textquoteright} social media discontinuance intention. In addition, considering that social media is the predominant method of maintaining connectivity with others for Gen Z users during the lockdown, the fear of missing out (FoMO) buffered the impact of social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19 on Gen Z users{\textquoteright} social media discontinuance intention. Our research adds a hitherto underexplored perspective to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's mental health. We offer a series of practical suggestions for social media users, social media platform providers, and health officials, institutions, and organizations in the effective and sustainable use of social media during the global COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic time.",

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N2 - While previous research highlights the benefits of social media in times of a pandemic, this research focuses on the potential dark side of social media use among Generation Z (Gen Z) in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown between March and May 2020. The study reveals that COVID-19 information overload through social media had a negative impact on Gen Z social media users’ psychological well-being. Moreover, perceived information overload heightened both social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19, which, in turn, increased users’ social media discontinuance intention. In addition, considering that social media is the predominant method of maintaining connectivity with others for Gen Z users during the lockdown, the fear of missing out (FoMO) buffered the impact of social media fatigue and fear of COVID-19 on Gen Z users’ social media discontinuance intention. Our research adds a hitherto underexplored perspective to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people's mental health. We offer a series of practical suggestions for social media users, social media platform providers, and health officials, institutions, and organizations in the effective and sustainable use of social media during the global COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic time.

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COVID-19 information overload and generation Z's social media discontinuance intention during the pandemic lockdown

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