Impact of Sex on COVID-19 Media Exposure,Anxiety,Perceived Risk,and Severity in Middle-Aged and Older Adults

Abstract

Objectives

To examine associations between COVID-19 media exposure and anxiety/perceived risk/severity and investigate their dependency on sex in middle-aged/older adults.

Methods

Adults aged 50+ years completed online surveys: Coronavirus Anxiety Scale, COVID-19 media exposure, COVID-19 media dependency for health information, and COVID-19 perceived risk and severity. Multiple regressions examined independent and interactive (with sex) associations between COVID-19 media exposure/dependency and COVID-19 anxiety/perceived risk and severity. Analyses controlled for age, education, race, total medical conditions, and COVID-19 status.

Results

Higher COVID-19 media exposure was associated with higher COVID-19 anxiety among men (not women) and higher perceived risk/severity in both sexes. Higher COVID-19 media dependency was associated with higher COVID-19 anxiety and perceived risk/severity in both sexes.

Conclusion

In middle-aged/older adults, the use/dependency of media for COVID-19 information may be linked to negative psychological health and increased COVID-19 perceived risk and severity. Men may be at increased risk of anxiety related to media exposure.

Keywords

COVID-19 anxiety aging media sex differences

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Baguley

(2009). Standardized or simple effect size: What should be reported? British journal of psychology, 100(3), 603-617.

Balcázar-Hernández

Martínez-Murillo

Ramos-Peñafiel

Pellón Tellez

Manuel-Apolinar

Basurto

(2021). Women and COVID-19: severity and mortality in hospitalized middle-aged and older patients. Climacteric, 24(3), 313-315.

Bendau

Petzold

Pyrkosch

Mascarell Maricic

Betzler

Rogoll

Große

Ströhle

Plag

(2020). Associations between COVID-19 related media consumption and symptoms of anxiety, depression and COVID-19 related fear in the general population in Germany. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 271(2), 283-291.

Bureau of Labor Statistics . (2012). Median weekly earnings by sex, marital status, and presence and age of own children under 18 in 2012. U. S. Department of Labor.

Choi

D.-H.

Yoo

Noh

G.-Y.

Park

(2017). The impact of social media on risk perceptions during the MERS outbreak in South Korea. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 422-431.

Cohen

(1988). Statistical power for the social sciences (pp. 98-101). Laurence Erlbaum and Associates.

Cornwell

(2011). Independence through social networks: Bridging potential among older women and men. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 66B(6), 782-794.

Cucinotta

Vanelli

(2020). WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic. Acta Bio-medica: Atenei Parmensis, 91(1), 157-160.

Department

S. R.

(2021). Radio reach in the U.S. in 2020, by age and gender. Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/252185/radios-weekly-reach-in-the-us-by-age-and-gender/.

10.

Depoux

Martin

Karafillakis

Preet

Wilder-Smith

Larson

(2020). The pandemic of social media panic travels faster than the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Travel Medicine, 27(3), taaa031.

11.

Figueroa

Aguilera

(2020). The need for a mental health technology revolution in the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 523.

12.

Gao

Zheng

Jia

Chen

Mao

Chen

Wang

Dai

(2020). Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak. PloS one, 15(4), e0231924.

13.

Garfin

D. R.

Silver

R. C.

Holman

E. A.

(2020). The novel coronavirus (COVID-2019) outbreak: Amplification of public health consequences by media exposure. Health Psychology, 39(5), 355-357.

14.

Hayes

A. F.

(2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford publications.

15.

Holman

E. A.

Garfin

D. R.

Lubens

Silver

R. C.

(2020). Media exposure to collective trauma, mental health, and functioning: Does it matter what you see? Clinical Psychological Science, 8(1), 111-124.

16.

Huckins

DaSilva

Wang

Hedlund

Rogers

Nepal

Obuchi

Murphy

Meyer

Wagner

Holtzheimer

Campbell

(2020). Mental health and behavior of college students during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic: longitudinal smartphone and ecological momentary assessment study. Journal of Medical Internet research, 22(6), e20185.

17.

Klein

S. L.

Dhakal

Ursin

R. L.

Deshpande

Sandberg

Mauvais-Jarvis

(2020). Biological sex impacts COVID-19 outcomes. PLoS Pathogens, 16(6), e1008570.

18.

Kramer

A. D. I.

Guillory

J. E.

Hancock

J. T.

(2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(24), 8788-8790.

19.

Lee

(2020). Coronavirus anxiety scale: A brief mental health screener for COVID-19 related anxiety. Death Studies, 44, 393-401.

20.

Limcaoco

R. S. G.

Mateos

E. M.

Fernandez

J. M.

Roncero

(2020). Anxiety, worry and perceived stress in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, March 2020. Preliminary results. MedRxiv.

21.

Lin

C. A.

Lagoe

(2013). Effects of news media and interpersonal interactions on H1N1 risk perception and vaccination intent. Communication Research Reports, 30(2), 127-136.

22.

Liu

Chen

Lin

Han

(2020a). Clinical features of COVID-19 in elderly patients: A comparison with young and middle-aged patients. Journal of Infection, 80(6), e14-e18.

23.

Liu

Zhang

Wei

Jia

Shang

Sun

Zhou

Wang

Liu

(2020b). Prevalence and predictors of PTSS during COVID-19 outbreak in China hardest-hit areas: Gender differences matter. Psychiatry Research, 287, 112921.

24.

Lowrey

(2004). Media dependency during a large-scale social disruption: The case of September 11. Mass Communication and Society, 7(3), 339-357.

25.

Luo

Liu

Wang

Phillips-Howard

P. A.

Yang

Wang

(2020). Age differences in clinical features and outcomes in patients with COVID-19, Jiangsu, China: A retrospective, multicentre cohort study. BMJ Open, 10(10), e039887.

26.

McAndrew

F. T.

Jeong

H. S.

(2012). Who does what on Facebook? Age, sex, and relationship status as predictors of Facebook use. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(6), 2359-2365.

27.

Nanda

Vura

N. V. R. K.

Gravenstein

(2020). COVID-19 in older adults. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 32, 1199-1202.

28.

Nazione

Perrault

Pace

(2021). Impact of information exposure on perceived risk, efficacy, and preventative behaviors at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Health Communication, 36(1), 23-31.

29.

Organization

W. H.

(2020a). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters. Retrieved December 20, 2020, from https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters.

30.

Organization

W. H.

(2020b). Mental health and psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19 outbreak. Retrieved December 20, 2020, from https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/mental-health-considerations.pdf.

31.

Organization

W. H.

(2020c). Novel coronavirus—China. Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronavirus-china/en.

32.

Price-Haywood

E. G.

Burton

Fort

Seoane

(2020). Hospitalization and mortality among black patients and white patients with Covid-19. New England journal of medicine, 382(26), 2534-2543.

33.

Riehm

K. E.

Holingue

Kalb

L. G.

Bennett

Kapteyn

Jiang

Veldhuis

C. B.

Johnson

R. M.

Fallin

M. D.

Kreuter

Stuart

E. A.

Thrul

(2020). Associations between media exposure and mental distress among U.S. adults at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59(5), 630-638.

34.

Sandman

P. M.

(2009). Pandemics: Good hygiene is not enough. Nature, 459(7245), 322-323.

35.

Satre

D. D.

Hirschtritt

M. E.

Silverberg

M. J.

Sterling

S. A.

(2020). Addressing problems with alcohol and other substances among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 28(7), 780-783.

36.

Sharma

Volgman

A. S.

Michos

E. D.

(2020). Sex differences in mortality from COVID-19 pandemic. JACC: Case Reports, 2(9), 1407-1410.

37.

Tankovska

(2021a). Facebook usage reach in the United States 2021, by age group. Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/246221/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-facebook-by-age-group/.

38.

Tankovska

(2021b). Twitter usage reach in the United States 2021, by age group. Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/265647/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-twitter-by-age-group/.

39.

Thelwall

(2020). Covid-19 tweeting in English: Gender differences. El Profesional de la Información, 29(3), e290301.

40.

Van

McLaws

Crimmins

MacIntyre

Seale

(2010). University life and pandemic influenza: Attitudes and intended behaviour of staff and students towards pandemic (H1N1) 2009. BMC Public Health, 10(1), 130-139.

41.

Walter

S. L.

Seibert

S. E.

Goering

O’Boyle

E. H.

(2019). A tale of two sample sources: Do results from online panel data and conventional data converge? Journal of Business and Psychology, 34(4), 425-452.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.08 MB