Association between social media use and cyberchondria during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Cyberchondria is defined as an excessive or repeated online health-related information-seeking behavior exacerbated by information overload and quarantine, resulting in amplified health anxiety. A total of 406 Lebanese participants, residing in Lebanon, participated in this cross-sectional study conducted between February and March 2022 to investigate the association between social media use and cyberchondria severity. Participants filled an online questionnaire assessing the severity of cyberchondria (via short Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS-12)), fear of COVID-19 (via the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV–19S)), and social media use. The majority of recruited participants were females (76.6 %) with an average age of 30.87 ± 12.68 years. The average time spent on social media per day was 4.19 ± 2.86 h, and the mean scores per item were 2.27 ± 0.73 and 2 ± 0.71 of CSS-12 and Fear of COVID-19, respectively. Social media use for health-related information and considering health-related information from social media, google, and medical websites reliable, were found to be significantly associated with cyberchondria. The developed multiple linear regression model justified 23.3 % of the variation of cyberchondria severity score. Besides, social media use for health-related information (p-value < 0.001), Fear of COVID-19 (p-value < 0.001), and age (p-value = 0.046) were significantly associated with cyberchondria severity. This implies the importance of social media implementation in the health care field in the forms of e-medicine and telehealth.