While quarantining last summer, now-freshman Dasia Bandy was spending almost “every hour” scrolling through Twitter to keep up with the stream of Black Lives Matter protest news.
But over time, Bandy said the constant desire to stay informed began to wear her down, taking up all of her energy. Eventually, she said she needed to adjust her social and news consumption habits to prevent feeling overwhelmed, giving herself scheduled times during the day where she allows herself to look through social media.
“I wanted to be on top of everything, and it was summertime,” Bandy said. “So I was even more eager to be on top of things. But it doesn’t mean I necessarily had the time or the energy to be on top of it, which is why I mentally was exhausted and drained.”
Bandy is one of more than a dozen students who said they’ve felt “overwhelmed” balancing their online classes with social media consumption and activism in a year marked by rising hate crimes, the BLM movement and the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts in social media and mental health research said the pandemic has prompted students to be more in tune with current events but isolated from peers, prompting a rise in mental health issues like depression and anxiety.
Compared to previous academic terms, college students were more anxious and depressed last fall because of the pandemic, according to a June study from the Journal of Medical Internet Research. The study also found that more media consumption of COVID-19 news was associated with increased phone usage and decreased physical activity and outings.
Junior Samantha Millar said she has stayed involved in activism through the pandemic as an executive board member for GW Voices for Choices, a reproductive justice student organization. Millar said she gets stressed learning about systemic issues, like the “bleak state” of reproductive justice, that are too complex to solve in a short period of time.
She said her online advocacy efforts can burn her out at the end of the day, but working and talking through her anxieties with peers in the organization keeps her from feeling alone. She said working with students who share concerns and passions about social justice has helped her stay motivated and inspired.
Millar, a political communications major, said logging off and taking care of herself is challenging when she spends her whole day online in classes. She said she feels “utterly powerless” when a new “injustice” is spread on Twitter and other social media platforms.
“Between online school and ever-addictive social media, I often feel like I’m drowning in a constant flood of information,” Millar said in an email. “I am not always successful in stepping away from my devices, but when I can, I feel the benefits immediately.”
Young adults who spent more than five hours a day using social media were more likely to become depressed in six months compared to students who used social media for fewer than two hours, according to a December study from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Senior Emma Sullivan, a political science and criminal justice major, said she uses social media like TikTok and Instagram to hear about current events in her downtime. She said she wants to be informed and “active” in supporting criminal justice movements like racial equity, but she sometimes deals with “mental wear” from hearing each story.
She said people are spending more time online and indoors during the pandemic, giving them endless access to information about heavy events like mass shootings.
“Social media is really powerful and really useful because it is a great way for any given person to bring attention to issues and help with mutual aid and GoFundMes, so in that way I think it’s really powerful and useful,” Sullivan said. “Individually, it’s definitely very mentally draining.”
Experts in social media and mental health research said students should schedule time away from their phones because of the harmful effects that staying online all day can have on their brains. They said students had more breaks from work in the past by meeting with peers, while the virtual learning environment keeps students plugged in and exposed to more information on a “24-hour” basis.
Bu Zhong, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, said he has been researching how students can “take back control” by working and managing their mental health while staying informed. Zhong said students should take a break from social media to “re-energize” their minds.
He said students should designate set times to use and engage with social media and learn about current events.
“Social media and all these sort of digital media platforms are tools, just like a knife,” he said. “A knife can be made to cut fruit, but also a knife can be used to kill people. It depends how you are going to use it.”
Jordan Young, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania, said research has confirmed that populations at large are experiencing “Zoom fatigue” from working remotely. She said people are more likely to work longer hours now because mental exhaustion prevents them from working more efficiently.
She said staring at a screen for multiple hours a day and having constant access to current events is physically exhausting and overwhelming.
“The capabilities that we have now, that we have smartphones and all these different technologies to connect us with people around the world is incredible,” Young said. “And it’s very useful in a lot of circumstances. But living in a pandemic, with so many other things happening and just a lot of things on our mind, it definitely can be a reminder of all of that stress.”
