Observational studyScientific reports2022
Examining the impact of sharing COVID-19 misinformation online on mental health.
Observational study in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
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
44 citing papers in PubMed, 109 citations in OpenAlex.
- Online Health Misinformation Susceptibility Increases Health Risk Behaviors and Vaccine Hesitancy: Evidence from Greece.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Examining the Association Between Internet Use and Perceived Stress in Adults: Longitudinal Observational Study Combining Web Tracking Data With Questionnaires.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Observational
- What can chatbot conversations reveal about vaccine concerns? An observational topic modelling study for public health infoveillance.BMJ digital health & AI · 2026Article
- Associations between susceptibility to online health misinformation, health risk behaviors and vaccine hesitancy among nursing students in Greece.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Perceived Disinformation, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms in the Czech Population: Age-Specific Associations.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- How social learning enhances-or undermines-efficiency and flexibility in collective decision-making under uncertainty.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Fear and Medical Misinformation Regarding Risk of Progression or Recurrence Among Patients with Breast Cancer.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Family and teachers lead the way: How different information sources about COVID-19 influenced children's well-being during the pandemic.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Evaluating reasoning large language models on rumor generation, detection, and debunking tasks.iScience · 2025Article
- Exposure to fake news on social media, coping mechanisms, and mental health impact among Vietnamese adolescents and young adults.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Assessing the accuracy and explainability of using ChatGPT to evaluate the quality of health news.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Identification of Online Health Information Using Large Pretrained Language Models: Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Beliefs in Misinformation About COVID-19 and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Are Linked: Evidence From a Nationally Representative Survey Study.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- Exploring Implications of Risk Communication Strategies in Diminishing Adversities of Misinformation and Disinformation Against Hepatitis Vaccination in Global South.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2025Article
- Unexpected effects of pandemic-related changes on mental health: Evidence from a nationwide survey in South Korea.PloS one · 2025Article
- HPV vaccine misinformation on social media: A multi-method qualitative analysis of comments across three platforms.PEC innovation · 2024Article
- The Implications of Artificial Intelligence on Infection Prevention and Control: Current Progress and Future Perspectives.China CDC weekly · 2024Article
- A Comprehensive Analysis of COVID-19 Misinformation, Public Health Impacts, and Communication Strategies: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Infodemiology and Infoveillance of the Four Most Widespread Arbovirus Diseases in Italy.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Social media threats and health among adolescents: evidence from the health behaviour in school-aged children study.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic proliferated widely on social media platforms during the course of the health crisis. Experts have speculated that consuming misinformation online can potentially worsen the mental health of individuals, by causing heightened anxiety, stress, and even suicidal ideation. The present study aims to quantify the causal relationship between sharing misinformation, a strong indicator of consuming misinformation, and experiencing exacerbated anxiety. We conduct a large-scale observational study spanning over 80 million Twitter posts made by 76,985 Twitter users during an 18.5 month period. The results from this study demonstrate that users who shared COVID-19 misinformation experienced approximately two times additional increase in anxiety when compared to similar users who did not share misinformation. Socio-demographic analysis reveals that women, racial minorities, and individuals with lower levels of education in the United States experienced a disproportionately higher increase in anxiety when compared to the other users. These findings shed light on the mental health costs of consuming online misinformation. The work bears practical implications for social media platforms in curbing the adverse psychological impacts of misinformation, while also upholding the ethos of an online public sphere.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.