The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Political Anxiety

Abstract

In the last two decades, social media platforms have become more prevalent and smartly utilized as a digital public sphere. Pervasive criticisms in various areas of the world have been leveled at how social media platforms regulate political discourse and public sentiment. This research investigates how netizens are getting involved with popular social media as a political source and explores subsequent political anxiety. The results continuously show that higher engagement through social media platforms is related to a higher degree of political anxiety, even controlling many potentially confounding variables. Compared with other sources, it is also more likely that information shared on social media platforms is perceived as false by netizens (Yang et al., 2023). In addition, it also considers the personal profile who actively loves to get the information through social media as an individual’s popular account. The findings imply an insightful awareness to better understand attitudes towards social media as sources of political information in populist democracy concept. By addressing psychologists, it is hoped that the research could improve efforts to reduce negative effects on mental health resulting from political information spread. To address this, netizens may be advised to be more sensitive while receiving information on social media. It depends on the comments with any information, it would be advisable to pay attention to individual identity. Comments from page owners are often not well analytically considered yet, suspiciousness should be more prevalent should you read this or that information in this area. On the other hand, policymakers and stakeholders of social media as a well-liked platform should also take note, targeting content must not appear susceptible to troubles for mental health.

Keywords social media, political anxiety, digital public sphere, information perception, mental health, political discourse, netizens, engagement levels