International Journal of Business and Economy (IJBEC) eISSN: 2682-8359 [Vol. 3 No. 2 June 2021]
Journal website: http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ijbec
NAVIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL DISTANCING AND SOCIAL MEDIA ON MENTAL HEALTH: PURVIEW
OF COVID-19
Jannatul Ferdous1*
1 Faculty of Business and Finance, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Perak, MALAYSIA
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
Article Information:
Article history:
Received date : 21 June 2021 Revised date : 23 June 2021 Accepted date : 25 June 2021 Published date : 29 June 2021 To cite this document:
Ferdous, J. (2021). NAVIGATING THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL DISTANCING AND SOCIAL MEDIA ON MENTAL
HEALTH: PURVIEW OF COVID-19. International Journal of Business and Economy, 3(2), 52-63.
Abstract: This corona virus has become a black swan event for all and affected people’s life in numerous ways such as physically, mentally, financially. To prevent the spread of this virus, the effective and powerful measure is social distancing. All over the world have been practicing this social distancing since this virus keeps its footstep into this world. While practicing social distancing, quarantine; people are facing with mental health related problems such as depression, anxiety, stress, suicidal thoughts et cetera. Social media is playing an effective platform to keep connected with all people when people are engrossed into this social distancing. It seems social distancing is the ultimate need and social media has become the necessity during this pandemic. This study aims to justify the influence of social distancing and social media on people’s mental health. Snowball sampling method was used to choose 150 statistical population for this study. Web-based questionnaire was prepared, and data were analyzed through SEM-PLS model using Smart PLS. Composite reliability, Cronbach’s alpha and discriminant validity have meet all the threshold for this research. The finding implies that social distancing has significant impact on mental health whereas social media proves insignificant impact on mental health.
Keywords: Covid-19, Social distancing, Social media, Smart PLS, Mental health.
1. Introduction
The pandemic of Covid-19 is the out of the blue for all of the people of the world. Not a single person projected the 2020 will turn into the fear, anxiety, illness, full of patients and obviously toll of deaths. The Corona virus is originated from China and now it is ruling all over the world like a monster. Almost more than 172 million people all over the world have been the victim of this virus. Even the death toll due to the corona had outnumbered all the statistics of the past cases. For this reason, this corona virus is named as Pandemic. Moreover, 3.7 million people are lost their lives due to this virus (World meter, 20 August,2020).
Like other countries, Malaysia is not the exception of this. Malaysia had also been a victim of this virus. Near about 0.58 million people are affected due to this deadly virus and around 3000 people are dead for this virus in Malaysia (World meter, 3 June 2021). One of the preventions of the spread of this virus is just social distancing or self-isolation. To ensure the prevention of this deadly virus, China initiated the lock-down all over the country. To comply with this and combat the virus, people start to keep themselves in houses away from everyone and everything.
This Covid-19 does not beget only physical illness but also mental health problems. Due to this pandemic most of the people are suffering from physiological issues such as stress, anxiety, depression and even if suicidal thoughts. People are very concerned about the physical well- being, whereas the mental wellbeing remains always out of the box. But in this pandemic mental health is also suffering in the silence. According to WHO "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
Social distance is considered as the one and only powerful tool to prevent the transmit of the corona virus. At present, due to this lock-down or self-isolation, the routine of the mass people has been changed drastically. People cannot go to outside, no face-to-face interaction even nothing. All is shut down due to this pandemic as there is no way out except this. For this, they have nothing to do in home, suffers boredom and brings the ultimate frustration and depression.
This social confinement has become also stressful act for many.
Due to this social distancing, the face-to-face communication has transferred into online media.
For this isolation, and social distancing, people have become more dependent on social media.
It seems like social distancing has become the need and social media has become the necessity of the people during pandemic. When the world is engrossed in this pandemic, social media has become the easy and economical platform for everyone to be connected. However, this social media deals with several issues both positive and negative during this ongoing pandemic. Misinformation, fake news is flooded in the social media due to this corona virus.
It seems like social media rumors spread faster than the original corona viruses.
News of viruses, fake news is bombarded in social media. According to Global Web Index, there is almost 35% of people watch television to get news whereas 23% people deals with the usage of social media (Global Stat, 2021). Last May, 88.94% of people used Facebook to get information in Malaysia (Global Stat, 2021). This implies that due to lock-down the usage of social media has been increased.
2. Literature Review
There are some theories those have been developed to align with the mental health from time to time. PMT theory has been chosen for this research study as this theory entails the changes of human’s behavioral pattern during pandemic.
2.1 PMT Theory
Protection motivation theory is one of the theories that is used to describe how to adopt some health measures like social distance or self-isolation during pandemic. Rogers developed this theory in 1975 to justify the behavioral attitude of the human in the life-threatening situation.
In case of pandemic situation, this theory plays the role as a protective tool to ensuring motivational reasons. During pandemic situation, threat appraisal and coping appraisal come into play. This threat appraisal justifies the people’s viewpoint towards the momentousness of the situation. Furthermore, this threat appraisal deals with the vulnerability of the situation. In case of coping appraisal, this implies that how individuals can manage themselves in the pandemic situation (Teasdale et al., 2012).
2.2. Social Distancing and Mental Health
During pandemic the depression, anxiety, stress become so preeminent that impact the psychological well-being (Tan et al., 2019). Previous studies have given clear evidence between pandemic and symptoms of suicidal trends stress, depression and post traumatic disorder.
According to Bryan, Arturo and Samanta (2020) there has been devastating mental health issues during this pandemic on the people of Mexico. They also imply that fear of SARS virus has also deadly consequences on anxiety, sleeping issues, depression. Global disease outbreaks (like COVID-19) have a harmful impact on mental health.
Gao J et al. (2020) suggested that during lockdown people are undergoing mental health issues.
According to Moghanibashi-Mansourieh (2020), people staying long time in house receive less sunlight that reduce serotonin level leads to mental depression.
Huang Y and Zhao N (2020) found that women were more inclined to anxiety and depressing signs during the COVID-19. The more the people in social isolation or in lockdown, the more they will be inclined to frustration, stress and posttraumatic disorder (Neela & Saikat, 2020).
Farroq et al. (2020) reported that there is significant impact found on the panic and fear attack due to the usage of covid-19. Moukaddam and Shah (2020) asserted that this pandemic creates lot of mental illness issues that will stay long after pandemic is over due to lock-down. Li et al.
(2020) also speculated that there is badly impact on mental health like suicidal issues, self-harm, mental imbalance for this pandemic. The short term or long-term lock down or self-isolation begets long term mental stress and post traumatic disorder (Wang et al., 2020).
2.3 Social Media and Mental Health
Araz and Hersh (2020) justified the possible reasoning of the heavy usage of social media with the anxiety and mental issues due to pandemic. During the time of SARS outbreak, some studies high lightened the factor of mental issues like sickness, sleeping disorder, depression etc. According to WHO (2020), social distancing or self-isolation leads to disturbance of daily activities and begets stress, depression all illness.
Michael Y et al. (2020) found that people in lockdown are more prone to spend time on social media that begets nothing but only depression. According to The (2020), the outbreak of social media panic can be handled in proper way with authentic information. Study indicated some positive findings regarding social media on our mental health as it keeps people connected with their near and dear ones (Yao et al., 2020). In contrary, Rooij and Schoenmakers (2012) mirrored that uncontrollable usage of social media affects mental wellness severely. Again, travel bans, improper news on social media add fuel on the mental stress. Kaur and Bashir (2015) identified and justified the finding that there are both positive and negative sides of social media on mental wellness of teenage people. According to Hearty Soul (2016), the more people are absorbed in social media, the more they become more stressful and less focused.
Gao and Zheng (2020) exhibited a high pervasiveness of mental health issues positively associated with recurrent exposure to social media during covid-19.
2.4 Problem Statement and Research Objective
Due to this pandemic, everything has turned into new phase. The impact of this pandemic has not only confined to physical illness but also physiological well-being. Along with physical wellness, mental health should be given utmost priority. But, in this case, physical health issues are always on the limelight to the people, government, society whereas the mental health issues suffer in the silence.
According to Ho et al. (2020), social distance, isolation, social media create mental anxiety.
Social isolation brings about detrimental mental health problems in the long run even if the corona will go away. Its shadow will leave long lasting impact on everyone’s mind.
Physiological syndrome will leave a great impact on day-to-day life and trigger mental issues associated with it like SARS, Ebola.
As self-isolation is one of the preventive tools of the transmission of virus, social media took the place of the being connected easily. During pandemic, it has become the most valuable platform to remain attached with near and dear ones. Social media gives the empathy to get connect with all. This social media turned people’s lives from real life to virtual ones to keep solidarity among people. During lock-down social media has become kind of blessing to all but somewhat it acts as burden due to fake news.
According to Vincenzo Giallonardo et al. (2020), loneliness, depression, self-harm, suicidal tendency will be the outcome of the social isolation. Moreover, the virus is not only spreads fasted, but the news, misinformation and panic become more viral than the virus (Anneliese Depoux et al., 2020). This covid-19 pandemic has unlocked new era of research in this field with a wide scope, Moreover, there is very less research found on both social distance and social media together on mental health. By evaluating these above circumstances, this research paper will shed light how social media and social distancing will impact mental health of the people during pandemic.
Considering the past literatures, two hypotheses have been developed:
H1: There is significant impact of social distancing on depression during covid-19.
H2: There is significant impact of social media on depression during covid-19.
3. Methodology
An anonymous, quantitative, and cross-sectional survey was commenced on 9th August and ended on 14th August 2020. Subjects were asked to participate if they were connected to social media like Facebook and WhatsApp. A total of 150 international students were the respondents of this study who were studying in Malaysia. Researchers did not try to find or exclude the people who were experiencing mental health problems at the time of the survey. International students, age not less than 18 years were the inclusion criteria of this study. Questionnaire was prepared in English language. There were four sections where questionnaire was divided:
demographic section, mental health related questions, social distancing and social media related questions. Respondents had to answer 11 questions preparing using Likert scale strongly disagree=1, disagree=2, neutral=3, agree=4, strongly agree=5.
4. Data Analysis
4.1 Respondents’ Demographic Analysis
In this study the researcher divided the data analysis part into two sectors; one is demographic one another one is for measurement and structural model.
The demographic data of the respondent’s n= 150 are presented below.
Table 4.1: Demographic Data of Study
Factors Frequency distribution Percentage
Gender Female
Male 73
77
48.7%
51.3%
Age (years) 18- 21
22-25 26-29 30-33 34-39 Above 40
75 19 25 15 12 3
50%
12.7%
16.7%
10%
8%
2%
Education Level College
Undergrad Postgrad
43 51 55
28.7%
34%
36.7%
From the table 4.1 it is shown that male participant international students are participated in the survey near 51.3%. In case of age group 50% of the participant age was between 18-21 years. So, it is mirrored that the participant’s educational level is 28.7% and 34% for college and undergrad level. For the post grad students, 36.7% international students give opinion on this survey.
4.2 Inferential Analysis
4.2.1 Composite Reliability and Average Variance Extracted
According to Hair, Ringle and Sarstedt (2012), the minimum threshold of the composite reliability is 0.70. From the table 4.2, it is evident that all the constructs are highly statistically as all are above 0.70. Furthermore, the threshold of AVE is the equal or above 0.50 (Hair, Hult, Ringle & Sarstedt, 2017). This implies that 50% of the variance have been captured by the variable’s correlation. From the table 4.2, it is justified that all the construct’s Cronbach alpha have met up the minimum threshold criteria that is above than 0.650.
Table 4.2: Composite Reliability and Average Variance
Cronbach's Alpha Composite Reliability Average Variance Extracted
(AVE)
MH 0.757 0.859 0.671
SD 0.888 0.918 0.692
SM 0.651 0.813 0.595
4.3 Discriminant Validity
Table 4.3: Criterion of Fornell-Larcker
MH SD SM
MH 0.819
SD 0.736 0.832
SM 0.201 0.204 0.771
According to table 4.3, MH value of Fornell-Larcker .819 is greater than the two other values of SD and SM. Again, in case of SD value .832 is greater than SM value. According to HTMT criteria, the threshold of the HTMT is .85(.90). The values of the HTMT are less than .85 another one is .88 that is also less than .90.
Figure 4.1: Measurement Model of the Study
From the figure 4.1, the threshold of the factor loading is equal or greater than 0.70 (Hair, Ringle & sarstedt, 2012). All the values except .654 is above .70. But according to Hair et al.
(2019) the factor loading values can be range from 0.60 to 0.70 is also acceptable. Here, the R-square is 0.544 that implies that 54% of the variance of the mental health is explained by both independent variables like social media and social distancing.
4.4 Path Coefficient
Table 4.4: Table of Path Coefficient
Original
Sample (O)
Sample Mean (M)
Standard Deviation (STDEV)
T Statistics (|O/STDEV|)
P Values
SD -> MH 0.725 0.726 0.04 18.249 0.00
SM -> MH 0.053 0.061 0.066 0.812 0.417
From the table 4.4, to be statistically significant the P value should be lower than 0.05. So, the p value of the social distancing on mental health is less than 0.05 that is very highly statistically significant whereas the p value of the social media on the mental health is beyond the threshold which is 0.417 whereas that justifies that social media is insignificant to the mental health.
Figure 4.2 Structural Model of The Study
The threshold of the t values is equal or greater than 1.98 (Ringle et al., 2019). Any value that is reported less than 1.98 is statistically insignificant. From the figure 4.2, all the t-values are greater than 1.98 that implies that this model is statistically significant.
5. Results and Discussion
The COVID-19 epidemic has wreaked havoc on the world's health and economy. As a result, governments are hurrying to establish legally enforceable laws for the general population in order to ensure their safety. However, when the required self-isolation regulations are implemented, mental health specialists all around the world are reporting social distancing consequences. From the above data analysis and questionnaire findings, it states that social distancing leaves a positive significant impact on depression. That hampers the physiological wellbeing of the respondents. This finding corroborates with the findings of Goeorgia Konstantopoulou and Natassa raikou (2020) that social isolation leads to depression in Greece.
Furthermore, this result is similar with the study of (Eqbal Redwan et al., 2020) that long time social isolation and distancing paves the way to the depression, stress.
Our finding refutes the findings of Tunkai Oral and Aykut Gunlu (2021), that social distancing leads to depression of the people. Moreover, individuals who practice social distancing lead to experience fewer depression, anxiety and mental health problems (Cudjoe et al., 2020).
But in case of social media usage, there is insignificant impact found on depression. This indicates that during pandemic though social media usage has been increased, the impact from it is insignificant. During pandemic, social media is not playing as a tool to increase the depression level of respondent by remain connected.
This finding refutes the result found by of Krylova (2017) states that usage of social media creates and impact on mental health that leads to respondent’s depression and anxiety. Another finding suggested that usage of social media had significant impact on the mental health of cancer patients that usage of social media decreases depression of the patients (Farpour et al., 2017). The findings of this paper contradict the result of Alzahrani, Morsi and Sharif (2021) noted that social medial has significant role on depression and stress.
There can be probable reason that as all the respondents are international students in Malaysia and living alone, before this pandemic the social media was the mostly used tool to communicate with friends and family. So, the usage of social media cannot leave an impact to lessen the depression level in a significant way.
Furthermore, the lockdown period persists significant impact on depression. For the long duration of lockdown, there was less social contact with friends, hangout, barred from daily activities. This increases the depression level and induce the stress level of the participants.
This will leave a long-term impact on mental health by leaving them into post traumatic disorder in future.
6. Implication
This study will add new feather to the research area of covid-19. As there is new research Scope has been unlocked, it will help to create new dimension by analyzing both social distancing and social media’s impact on mental health together. This will help to bridge study gaps regarding mental health issues by considering these two factors together. Malaysian government should have proper knowledge about what’s on-going in social media so that any fake news, misleading information should not be spread out. Online communication, online counselling for all the international students should be reinforced properly so that they do not feel depressed or lifeless. Therefore, government should build up online counselling media through university and city wise so everyone should be mentally fit and keep in touch.
7. Conclusion
One day this pandemic will have to be a full stopped; this situation will be memory. But this scenario has silver lining. This pandemic will leave its shadow behind its journey. Social interaction is needed to keep alive during this pandemic lock-down in form of virtual interactivity. During pandemic, when social interaction is prohibited social media becomes a physiological need to keep connected with all. Online peer monitoring support, home based relaxation techniques, enhancing safety to all are the measures that should be taken to handle this situation. When this pandemic will keep its last footprints, people will have different viewpoint regarding the spectrum of life.
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