Exploring the Dark Side of Social Media During the Pandemic in India

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced the norm of social distancing which threatened the natural tendency of human beings to live life together. To stay connected to fellow humans, people started using social media to their advantage. The existing literature provides enough evidence that sheds light on the impact of social media usage on the mental health of users. Since the pandemic was a new situation that affected the wellbeing of people, the impact of the transformed use of the cyberspace on the mental health of people begged to be explored to understand the positive and negative role played by social media. Specially, in the Indian context, this exploration becomes a necessity when India records one of the highest users of social media users in the world. With a survey study in which 101 Indian residents participated, the negative role of social media use on their mental health during the pandemic was self-reported by 62.38% of them whereas 40.40% mentioned that social media usage positively contributed to their wellbeing.