The importance of trust in the relation between COVID-19 information from social media and well-being among adolescents and young adults

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank our practitioner partners and the youth who participated in the study. Correspondence should be addressed to Adam J. Hoffman in the Department of Psychology, Cornell University, T229 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, 116 Reservoir Ave, Ithaca, New York, USA, 14850.
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council
During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people have been exposed to distressing content about COVID-19 without knowing whether they can trust such content. This indicates a need to examine the effects of social media use on mental health and well-being. Existing research provides an inconsistent impression of such effects. Thus, we examined the relation between exposure to COVID-19 information on social media and well-being and assessed if trust in COVID-19 information on social media moderated this relationship. The sample consisted of 168 adolescents and young adults from the U.K. and U.S. (Mage = 17.4 years). Participants completed measures of exposure to, and trust in, COVID-19 information on social media platforms, and measures of emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Results revealed a null to positive relation between exposure to COVID-19 information on social media and well-being across measures. However, when trust was added to the models as a moderator, results indicated that, for adolescents with higher levels of trust in COVID-19 information found on social media, the relation between information encountered on social media and well-being was positive. In contrast, for adolescents with lower levels of trust, the association between information encountered on social media and well-being was null or sometimes negative. Given the lack of consensus about the impact of social media use on well-being, these results point to the importance of trust when assessing the relationship between exposure to COVID-19 information and well-being.