Group Differences: The Relationship between Social Media Use and Depression during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in China

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 triggered more psychological problems than usual among the public. During this epidemic, the use of social media was very high, and several studies confirmed a positive correlation between social media use and people’s psychological problems. The Chinese government has subsequently implemented a series of policies concerning the social media environment to tackle this “infodemic”. After the containment of the first COVID-19 outbreak, China saw a new wave of COVID-19 cases in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province in January 2021. How the optimized social media could have impacted public mental health remained to be revealed. Our research data come from an online survey of Chinese residents during the regional epidemic in Shijiazhuang, with a total of 904 valid samples from 18 different provinces in China. The results showed that this new round of outbreaks caused a high incidence of depression (38.9%) among the public. Compared with relatively advantaged groups, disadvantaged groups have a higher depression. Attributed to the optimization of the social media environment, the prevalence of social media use during the epidemic helped to markedly mitigate anxieties from depression. This is particularly demonstrated in vulnerable groups. We found, for the first time, a change in the relationship between social media use and resident depression, and more importantly, a stronger correlation between social media use and depression in relatively disadvantaged groups. Therefore, during the epidemic, actively optimizing the social media environment has a significant and positive effect on the mental health of residents, especially vulnerable groups.