Media exposure related to COVID-19 is associated with worse mental health consequences in the United States compared to Italy

ABSTRACT

Background

Prolonged media exposure after collective crises is widely shown to have adverse effects on people’s mental health. Do these effects show variation across different countries? In the present study, we compared the link between media exposure related to COVID-19 and mental health-related outcomes in the United States and Italy, two countries with high levels of early COVID-19 prevalence.

Method

Participants matched on age and gender in the United States (n = 415) and Italy (n = 442) completed assessments of media exposure, stress, anxiety, COVID-19 worry, and other variables shortly after the first wave of infections in 2020.

Results

COVID-19 related media exposure predicted higher levels of stress, anxiety, and COVID-19 worry, net of the effects of neuroticism, political identification, and demographics. Moreover, COVID-19 related media exposure interacted with country to predict more stress and COVID-19 worry in the United States than in Italy.

Conclusions

Findings are among the first to document cross-national differences in the association of media exposure with mental health outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Media exposure
• cross-national
• stress
• anxiety
• COVID-19
• United States

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Pace University Scholarly Research Grant .