ArticlePloS one2021
Brief exposure to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: Doom-scrolling has negative emotional consequences, but kindness-scrolling does not.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 83 citations in OpenAlex.
- Doomscrolling, mental health, and psychological well-being in adolescents and adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- A Behavioral Economic Characterization of the Impact of the COVID-19 Quarantine on Reinforcer Diversity, Behavior, and Health.Perspectives on behavior science · 2026Review
- Article
- Perspectives from Young Australian Women with Lived Experience on Why Rates of Self-Harm Are Increasing: A Qualitative Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Mapping EEG Metrics to Human Affective and Cognitive Models: An Interdisciplinary Scoping Review from a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Effects of COVID-19 related social media use on well-being.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Support for a right-wing populist party and subjective well-being: Experimental and survey evidence from Germany.PloS one · 2024Article
- 'I cannot see ahead': psychological distress, doomscrolling and dark future among adult survivors following MBMC public health · 2023Article
- Social Connectedness and Negative Emotion Modulation: Social Media Use for Coping Among College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Emerging adulthood (Print) · 2023Article
- Impact of Social Media Usage on Users' COVID-19 Protective Behavior: Survey Study in Indonesia.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Buffering the effects of bad news: Exposure to others' kindness alleviates the aversive effects of viewing others' acts of immorality.PloS one · 2023Article
- Effects of media on preventive behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2023Article
- Doomscrolling Scale: its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing.Applied research in quality of life · 2023Article
- Content appraisal and age moderate the relationship between passive social media use and mental ill-being.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People often seek out information as a means of coping with challenging situations. Attuning to negative information can be adaptive because it alerts people to the risks in their environment, thereby preparing them for similar threats in the future. But is this behaviour adaptive during a pandemic when bad news is ubiquitous? We examine the emotional consequences of exposure to brief snippets of COVID-related news via a Twitter feed (Study 1), or a YouTube reaction video (Study 2). Compared to a no-information exposure group, consumption of just 2-4 minutes of COVID-related news led to immediate and significant reductions in positive affect (Studies 1 and 2) and optimism (Study 2). Exposure to COVID-related kind acts did not have the same negative consequences, suggesting that not all social media exposure is detrimental for well-being. We discuss strategies to counteract the negative emotional consequences of exposure to negative news on social media.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.