The Effect of the Way of Using Social Media on Health Promoting Behaviors and COVID-19-related Anxiety in Non-medical Students

The Effect of the Way of Using Social Media on Health Promoting Behaviors and COVID-19-related Anxiety in Non-medical Students

Ayatollah Fathi, Solmaz Sadeqi, Saeid Sharifi Rahnmo, Aliakbar Malekirad, Hosein Rostami, Raheleh Aghazadeh

Background One of the problems of today's Iranian youth is how to use social media coincided with theoutbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).Objective This study aimed to investigate the way of use of social media and its effect on health promotingbehaviors and COVID-19-related anxiety in non-medical students.Methods In this analytical study, participants were 307 non-medical students of Islamic Azad University ofTabriz Branch. Data collection tools were a demographic form, Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS) withtwo subscales of psychological and physical symptoms, and Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLP)with six subscales of spiritual growth, health responsibility, interpersonal relations, stress management,physical activity, and nutrition which were completed online. The multivariate analysis of variance and apost-hoc test were used for data analysis.Findings Of 307 participants, 256 were female (83%) and 51 were male (16.6%), with a mean age of27 years. The HPLP components of spiritual growth (P=0.001), health responsibility (P=0.001), stressmanagement (P=0.001), physical activity (P=0.002), and its overall score (P=0.001) had a significant relationshipwith the way of use of the Internet, and the group with a fun purpose had lower scores inthese variables compared to other groups. Moreover, the CDAS component of psychological symptoms(P=0.007) and its overall score (P=0.03) had a significant relationship with the way of using social media;the group with a fun purpose reported higher CDAS score than the groups with scientific and generalinformation acquiring purposes.Conclusion The use of social media for fun negatively affects the students’ lifestyle in the current coronavirusoutbreak and increases their COVID-19-related anxiety.

2020

Anxiety, covid-19, health promotion, social media, health, Lifestyle

10.32598/JQUMS.24.2.2377.1

The Journal of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences

Qazvin University of Medical Sciences & Health Services

Medicine