The Role of Social Media in Knowledge, Perceptions, and Self-Reported Adherence Toward COVID-19 Prevention Guidelines: Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has served as a channel of communication, a venue for entertainment, and a mechanism for information dissemination.

Objective: This study aims to assess the associations between social media use patterns; demographics; and knowledge, perceptions, and self-reported adherence toward COVID-19 prevention guidelines, due to growing and evolving social media use.

Methods: Quota-sampled data were collected through a web-based survey of US adults through the Qualtrics platform, from March 15, 2022, to March 23, 2022, to assess covariates (eg, demographics, vaccination, and political affiliation), frequency of social media use, social media sources of COVID-19 information, as well as knowledge, perceptions, and self-reported adherence toward COVID-19 prevention guidelines. Three linear regression models were used for data analysis.

Results: A total of 1043 participants responded to the survey, with an average age of 45.3 years, among which 49.61% (n=515) of participants were men, 66.79% (n=696) were White, 11.61% (n=121) were Black or African American, 13.15% (n=137) were Hispanic or Latino, 37.71% (n=382) were Democrat, 30.21% (n=306) were Republican, and 25% (n=260) were not vaccinated. After controlling for covariates, users of TikTok (β=-.29, 95% CI -0.58 to -0.004; P=.047) were associated with lower knowledge of COVID-19 guidelines, users of Instagram (β=-.40, 95% CI -0.68 to -0.12; P=.005) and Twitter (β=-.33, 95% CI -0.58 to -0.08; P=.01) were associated with perceiving guidelines as strict, and users of Facebook (β=-.23, 95% CI -0.42 to -0.043; P=.02) and TikTok (β=-.25, 95% CI -0.5 to -0.009; P=.04) were associated with lower adherence to the guidelines (R² 0.06-0.23).

Conclusions: These results allude to the complex interactions between online and physical environments. Future interventions should be tailored to subpopulations based on their demographics and social media site use. Efforts to mitigate misinformation and implement digital public health policy must account for the impact of the digital landscape on knowledge, perceptions, and level of adherence toward prevention guidelines for effective pandemic control.