Examining the relationship between the psycho-social aspects of Facebook use and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic among young adults in Singapore

• Main Author: Leow, Cherie Xiao Jun
• Other Authors: Gianluca Esposito
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/148142
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With the COVID-19 pandemic, many restrictions were established by the government to prevent the virus’s spread. This ensued limited interactions among many Singaporeans through social media such as Facebook. This study is interested in studying the relationship between the psycho-social aspect of Facebook usage and young adults’ general mental health during this pandemic in Singapore. 293 participants were recruited to complete a set of questionnaires: (i) Social Demographic Questionnaire, (ii) Beck's Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), (iii) Beck’s Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and (iv) Psycho-social Aspect of Facebook Use (PSAFU). A final dataset of N=58 was analyzed after removing data that failed to meet the inclusion criteria or were incomplete. Preliminary analyses (i.e. descriptive and reliability statistics and correlation), Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and post-hoc test (i.e. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)) were employed to analyze the data via RStudio. As a preliminary conclusion, the results indicated correlations between depression and PSAFU, despite the lack of direct causal relations between the two. Secondly, the results also indicated that the sample was more anxious than depressed. There could be a causal relationship between anxiety and PSAFU, with only the socializing aspect being correlated with anxiety. As this is preliminary research, the findings provide insights into the relationship between these variables, specifically during a pandemic. Furthermore, it also provides insights on how we could use social media as a tool to evaluate mental health and establish possible interventions to prevent mental health decline online.