As a college student, the outbreak of COVID-19 certainly shook my world. My campus closed, all socializing reverted to Zoom meetings and my entire college experience came to a screeching halt. With plenty of free time on my hands during quarantine last spring, I found myself using social media more than I ever had before. Being consumed by Instagram and Twitter took a serious toll on my mental health and affected everything I thought I knew about life. Constantly fear-struck about the virus as it was, rumors and fake posts spread online only catalyzed my anxiety. Many times, I would wish for social media to disappear all at once—it was seriously like a toxic ex by May: I would even delete all the social media apps on my phone, only to soon re-download them out of curiosity and become consumed all over again.

During the fall of 2020, I conducted my own primary and secondary research to understand the science behind how social media has changed amid the 2019 pandemic outbreak, as well as how such changes have affected others’ mental health. Throughout this white paper, I weigh the pro’s and con’s of social media when it comes to risk communication and ask whether it is more beneficial or detrimental to society as a whole.