SynthesisJournal of affective disorders2022
COVID-19 news consumption and distress in young people: A systematic review.
Synthesis in Journal of affective disorders, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- How and When COVID-19-related News Consumption Relates to Mental Health Complaints-A Cross-Sectional Study.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Youth-developed recommendations on public health planning for future pandemics or public health emergencies: a national Delphi study.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2026Article
- Impact of Media-Induced Uncertainty on Mental Health: Narrative-Based Perspective.JMIR mental health · 2025Article
- Viral Transmission? A Longitudinal Study of Media Use and Its Relation to Mental Strain During the First 2 Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Observational
- Representative national survey on drug use during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order in the USA.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Contributing Factors to the Rise in Adolescent Anxiety and Associated Mental Health Disorders: A Narrative Review of Current Literature.Journal of child and adolescent psychiatric nursing : official publication of the Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nurses, Inc · 2025Review
- COVID-19-related stress and positive coping strategies among young adults in Canada and France: A latent class analysis.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Support from Social Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The impact of source and consumption of news on mental distress among inflammatory bowel disease patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology · 2024Article
- Mixed-methods study of university students' perceptions of COVID-19 and media consumption from March 2020 -April 2022.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Unmasking the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of college students: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Music emotion recognition based on temporal convolutional attention network using EEG.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- "It's important to manage our stress": Mental health advice in the Australian print news media during the COVID-19 pandemic.SSM. Mental health · 2023Article
- The Impact of Information About COVID-19 on the Endocrine Stress System and Cognitive Distortions.Hormone and metabolic research = Hormon- und Stoffwechselforschung = Hormones et metabolisme · 2023Article
- Valence-arousal classification of emotion evoked by Chinese ancient-style music using 1D-CNN-BiLSTM model on EEG signals for college students.Multimedia tools and applications · 2023Article
- Differential impact on suicide mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.Revista brasileira de psiquiatria (Sao Paulo, Brazil : 1999) · 2022Article
- Infodemic and fake news - A comprehensive overview of its global magnitude during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021: A scoping review.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
- The Mental Health Impact of Daily News Exposure During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.JMIR mental health · 2022Article
- Emotional State of Mexican University Students in the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Media consumption and psychological distress among older adults in the United States.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has brought challenges for the mental health of young people. The volume, negative content and potential for misinformation within COVID-19 related news can be an additional cause of distress. This systematic review aims to synthesise the research findings on the relationship between COVID-19 news and distress in young people.
methodsFollowing the PRISMA guidelines, PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO databases were searched on 24 April 2021 for articles that contained empirical research examining the association between COVID-19 news consumption and mental health in samples of young people with a mean age between 10 and 24 years.
resultsThe 13 included studies involved 760,474 participants in predominantly cross-sectional studies, with data collected during COVID-19 lockdowns across seven countries. Increased consumption of COVID-19 news was associated with a decline in mental health (n = 11). The results were more consistent for news obtained on social media with variation for traditional media sources. Misinformation may further explain the relationship. LIMITATIONS: Heterogeneity across study methodologies, lack of longitudinal research and validated measures of news consumption.
conclusionsThe reviewed literature supports the association between increased consumption of COVID-19 related news and decreased mental health in young people. This group may benefit from support to mitigate the psychological impacts of COVID-19 news. Future research should utilise longitudinal designs, ecological momentary assessments, and reliable/valid measures of news consumption to explore the negative mental health associated with COVID-19 news in young people.
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Registered trials
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