CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 111COVID-19 and Mental HealthCommunication and COVID-19 ImpactMisinformation and Its Impacts

The role of social media in spreading panic among primary and secondary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic: An online questionnaire study from the Gaza Strip, Palestine

Open access
Radwan, Eqbal, Radwan, Afnan, Radwan, Walaa·2020·Heliyon
DOI 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05807PMC PMC7758520
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The rapid outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has opened up various issues on social media platforms among school students. The dangerous issue is that misinformation, fake news, and rumours spread on social media faster than reliable information, and also faster than the virus itself, damaging the health systems and affecting the mental health of social media users. OBJECTIVE: The current study aims at determining how social media affects the spread of panic about COVID-19 among primary and secondary school students in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. METHODS: The data were collected through an online questionnaire. By utilizing convenience sampling, we have reached a total of 1067 school students, aged between 6 and 18 years, from 56 schools located in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Independent Samples T-test, ANOVA, and chi-square tests were used to compare the data. RESULTS: The results showed that social media has a significant impact on spreading panic about COVID-19 among school students, with a potential negative impact on their mental health and psychological well-being. Facebook was the most common social media platform among students (81.8%), where female students had a higher likelihood than male students to use it to get news about COVID-19 (p < 0.001). Health news was the most frequently topic seen, read, or heard (n = 529, 56.2%) during the COVID-19 pandemic, where males were more likely to follow health news than females (p < 0.001). The majority of the students (n = 736, 78.1%) were psychologically affected, whereas those physically affected were the lowest (n = 12, 1.3%). Female students were psychologically affected and experienced greater fear significantly more than male students (p < 0.001). The effect of social media panic depending on a student's age and gender. (p < 0.001). This study showed a significant positive correlation between social media and spreading panic about COVID-19 (R = 0.891). CONCLUSIONS: During the closure of schools, students are using social media to continue their learning as well as to know more information about the COVID-19 outbreak. Social media has a main role in rapidly spreading of panic about the COVID-19 pandemic among students in the Gaza Strip.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05807

Cites

16 of 16 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Use of social media among adolescents played a main role in the rapid spread of panic in Palestine.

    “In Palestine, the use of social media among adolescents played a main role in the rapid spread of panic (Radwan, Radwan, & Radwan, 2020).”

    From The Online Strength-Informed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Among COVID-19-Affected Adolescents. (2022) · cites this paper as Radwan, Radwan, & Radwan, 2020

    The Abstract’s Conclusions state that social media had a main role in rapidly spreading COVID-19 panic among students in the Gaza Strip. The citing sentence broadens that finding to adolescents in Palestine generally, whereas the study concerns primary and secondary school students in Gaza. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 45

  1. [7]‏González-Padilla D.A. Tortolero-Blanco L. Social media influence in the COVID-19 Pandemic Int. Braz J. Urol. 46 2020 120 124 32550706 PMC7719982
  2. [9]Tasnim S. Hossain M.M. Mazumder H. Impact of rumors and misinformation on COVID-19 in social media J. Prevent. Med. Pub. Health 53 3 2020 171 174 PMC7280809 32498140
  3. [10]Park H.W. Park S. Chong M. Conversations and medical news frames on twitter: infodemiological study on covid-19 in South Korea J. Med. Internet Res. 22 5 2020 e18897 PMC7202309 32325426
  4. [11]Budhwani H. Sun R. Creating COVID-19 stigma by referencing the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” on twitter: quantitative analysis of social media data J. Med. Internet Res. 22 5 2020 e19301 PMC7205030 32343669
  5. [13]Woo H. Cho Y. Shim E. Lee J.K. Lee C.G. Kim S.H. Estimating influenza outbreaks using both search engine query data and social media data in South Korea J. Med. Internet Res. 18 7 2016 e177 27377323 PMC4949385
  6. [14]Mavragani A. Infodemiology and infoveillance: scoping review J. Med. Internet Res. 22 4 2020 e16206 PMC7189791 32310818
  7. [15]Chew C. Eysenbach G. Pandemics in the age of Twitter: content analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak PloS One 5 11 2010 e14118 PMC2993925 21124761
  8. [16]Kim Y. Huang J. Emery S. Garbage in, garbage out: data collection, quality assessment and reporting standards for social media data use in health research, infodemiology and digital disease detection J. Med. Internet Res. 18 2 2016 e41 26920122 PMC4788740
  9. [17]Barros J.M. Duggan J. Rebholz-Schuhmann D. The application of internet-based sources for public health surveillance (infoveillance): systematic review J. Med. Internet Res. 22 3 2020 e13680 PMC7101503 32167477
  10. [20]Bao H. Cao B. Xiong Y. Tang W. Digital media’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic JMIR mHealth and uHealth 8 9 2020 e20156 PMC7532458 32530817
  11. [21]Ahmad A.R. Murad H.R. The impact of social media on panic during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iraqi Kurdistan: online questionnaire study J. Med. Internet Res. 22 5 2020 e19556 PMC7238863 32369026
  12. [22]Gesser-Edelsburg A. Diamant A. Hijazi R. Mesch G.S. Correcting misinformation by health organizations during measles outbreaks: a controlled experiment PloS One 13 12 2018 e0209505 PMC6300261 30566485
  13. [23]Lwin M.O. Lu J. Sheldenkar A. Schulz P.J. Shin W. Gupta R. Yang Y. Global sentiments surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: analysis of Twitter trends JMIR Pub. Health Surveill 6 2 2020 e19447 PMC7247466 32412418
  14. [24]Zhao Y. Cheng S. Yu X. Xu H. Chinese public's attention to the COVID-19 epidemic on social media: observational descriptive study J. Med. Internet Res. 22 5 2020 e18825 PMC7199804 32314976
  15. [26]Merchant R.M. Lurie N. Social media and emergency preparedness in response to novel coronavirus JAMA 23 2020 29 31 32202611
  16. [28]Mian A. Khan S. Coronavirus: the spread of misinformation BMC Med. 18 1 2020 1 2 2020 32188445 PMC7081539
  17. [29]Ali K.F. Whitebridge S. Jamal M.H. Alsafy M. Atkin S.L. Perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors related to COVID-19 among social media users: cross-sectional study J. Med. Internet Res. 22 9 2020 e19913 PMC7481018 32841153
  18. [30]Al-Dmour H. Salman A. Abuhashesh M. Al-Dmour R. Influence of social media platforms on public health protection against the COVID-19 pandemic via the mediating effects of public health awareness and behavioral changes: integrated model J. Med. Internet Res. 22 8 2020 e19996 PMC7439806 32750004
  19. [33]Cuello-Garcia C. Pérez-Gaxiola G. van Amelsvoort L. Social media can have an impact on how we manage and investigate the COVID-19 pandemic J. Clin. Epidemiol. 2020 PMC7320665 32603686
  20. [34]Whitaker C. Stevelink S. Fear N. The use of Facebook in recruiting participants for health research purposes: a systematic review J. Med. Internet Res. 19 8 2017 e290 PMC5594255 28851679
  21. [35]Chiroma H. Shuib N.L.M. Abubakar A.I. Zeki A.M. Gital A.Y.U. Herawan T. Abawajy J.H. Advances in teaching and learning on Facebook in higher institutions IEEE Access 5 2016 480 500
  22. [36]Mejova Y. Kalimeri K. COVID-19 on Facebook ads: competing agendas around a public health crisis Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies 2020 22 31
  23. [37]Docimo S. Jacob B. Seras K. Ghanem O. Closed Facebook Groups and COVID-19: an Evaluation of Utilization Prior to and during the Pandemic 2020 Surgical endoscopy 1 5 PMC7489189 32926250
  24. [39]Raamkumar A.S. Tan S.G. Wee H.L. Measuring the outreach efforts of public health authorities and the public response on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020: cross-country comparison J. Med. Internet Res. 22 5 2020 e19334 PMC7238862 32401219
  25. [40]Isip-Tan I.T. Gutierrez J. Bernardo D.C. Use of Facebook to serve information needs of persons with diabetes amid the COVID-19 pandemic J. ASEAN Fed. Endocr. Soc. 35 1 2020 32 37 PMC7784183 33442167
  26. [43]Hartley K. Vu M.K. Fighting fake news in the COVID-19 era: policy insights from an equilibrium model Pol. Sci. 53 4 2020 735 758 PMC7479406 32921821
  27. [45]Hasan N. Bao Y. Impact of “e-Learning crack-up” perception on psychological distress among college students during COVID-19 pandemic: a mediating role of “fear of academic year loss” Child. Youth Serv. Rev. 118 2020 105355 32834276 PMC7422835
  28. [46]Xiong J. Lipsitz O. Nasri F. Lui L.M. Gill H. Phan L. Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in the general population: a systematic review J. Affect. Disord. 2020 PMC7413844 32799105
  29. [47]Sundarasen S. Chinna K. Kamaludin K. Nurunnabi M. Baloch G.M. Khoshaim H.B. Psychological impact of covid-19 and lockdown among university students in Malaysia: implications and policy recommendations Int. J. Environ. Res. Publ. Health 17 17 2020 6206 PMC7504527 32867024
  30. [48]Olmos-Gómez M.D.C. Sex and careers of university students in educational practices as factors of individual differences in learning environment and psychological factors during COVID-19 Int. J. Environ. Res. Publ. Health 17 14 2020 5036 PMC7400233 32668769
  31. [49]Liang S.W. Chen R.N. Liu L.L. Li X. Chen J.B. Tang S.Y. Zhao J. The psychological impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on Guangdong college students: the difference between seeking and not seeking psychological help Front. Psychol. 11 2020 2231 33013582 PMC7499802
  32. [51]Drissi N. Alhmoudi A. Al Nuaimi H. Alkhyeli M. Alsalami S. Ouhbi S. Investigating the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on the psychological health of university students and their attitudes toward mobile mental health solutions: two-Part Questionnaire study JMIR Form. Res. 4 10 2020 e19876 PMC7609193 32969340
  33. [52]Shahyad S. Mohammadi M.T. Psychological impacts of Covid-19 outbreak on mental health status of society individuals: a narrative review J. Mil. Med. 22 2 2020 ‏
  34. [53]Vahedian-Azimi A. Moayed M.S. Rahimibashar F. Shojaei S. Ashtari S. Pourhoseingholi M.A. Comparison of the severity of psychological distress among four groups of an Iranian population regarding COVID-19 pandemic BMC Psychiatr. 20 1 2020 1 7 PMC7414274 32770975
  35. [54]Rogowska A.M. Kuśnierz C. Bokszczanin A. Examining anxiety, life satisfaction, general health, stress and coping styles during COVID-19 pandemic in Polish sample of university students Psychol. Res. Behav. Manag. 13 2020 79 33061695 PMC7532061
  36. [56]Lei L. Huang X. Zhang S. Yang J. Yang L. Xu M. Comparison of prevalence and associated factors of anxiety and depression among people affected by versus people unaffected by quarantine during the covid-19 epidemic in southwestern China Med. Sci. Monit. 2020 26 PMC7199435 32335579
  37. [60]Azad N. Shahid A. Abbas N. Shaheen A. Munir N. Anxiety and depression in medical students of a private medical college J. Ayub Med. Coll. Abbottabad 29 1 2017 123 127 28712190
  38. [61]Olagoke A.A. Olagoke O.O. Hughes A.M. Exposure to coronavirus news on mainstream media: the role of risk perceptions and depression Br. J. Health Psychol. 2020 PMC7267047 32415914
  39. [64]Ozamiz-Etxebarria N. Dosil-Santamaria M. Picaza-Gorrochategui M. Idoiaga-Mondragon N. Stress, anxiety and depression levels in the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in a population sample in the northern Spain Cad. Saúde Pública 36 4 2020 32374806
  40. [69]Li C. Chen L.J. Chen X. Zhang M. Pang C.P. Chen H. Retrospective analysis of the possibility of predicting the COVID-19 outbreak from Internet searches and social media data, China, 2020 Euro Surveill. 25 10 2020 2000199 32183935 PMC7078825
  41. [70]Ni M.Y. Yang L. Leung C.M. Li N. Yao X.I. Wang Y. Mental health, risk factors, and social media use during the COVID-19 epidemic and cordon sanitaire among the community and health professionals in Wuhan, China: cross-sectional survey JMIR Mental Health 7 5 2020 e19009 PMC7219721 32365044
  42. [71]Lin Y. Hu Z. Alias H. Wong L.P. Influence of mass and social media on psychobehavioral responses among medical students during the downward trend of COVID-19 in Fujian, China: cross-Sectional study J. Med. Internet Res. 22 7 2020 e19982 PMC7373377 32584779
  43. [72]Hassounah M. Raheel H. Alhefzi M. Digital response during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia J. Med. Internet Res. 22 9 2020 e19338 PMC7473704 32790642
  44. [73]Shimizu K. 2019-nCoV, fake news, and racism Lancet 395 10225 2020 685 686‏ PMC7133552 32059801
  45. [76]Radwan E.S. The current status of the date palm tree (phoenix dactylifera L.) and its uses in the Gaza strip, Palestine The Current Status of the Date Palm Tree (Phoenix dactylifera L.) and its Uses in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, Master of Science in Biological Sciences Thesis 2017 The Islamic University Gaza, Palestine http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12358/21671

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Radwan, E., Radwan, A., & Radwan, W.
Affiliations
Islamic University of Gaza (PS)
Corresponding author
Radwan, Eqbal
ORCID
Venue
Heliyon
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-12
Volume
6
Issue
12
Pages
e05807
ISSN
2405-8440 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05807
PMC
PMC7758520
OpenAlex
W3114258029
Cited by
111
References
16
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 34 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 1
FWCI
9.01
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Heliyon (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic, social media, panic, school students, misinformation, fake news, rumors, mental health, psychological well-being, Facebook, gender differences, age differences, Gaza Strip, school closures

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review