Project Director
McCluskey, Michael
Department Examiner
Zahry, Nagwan; Freeman, Jessica
Publisher
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Place of Publication
Chattanooga (Tenn.)
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic spiked generalized anxiety worldwide. The onset of the pandemic also coincided with TikTok’s rise to popularity in the social media landscape, especially among young adults and children. As a result, COVID-19-related content rose to prevalence on the platform as it became a common outlet for users to share their thoughts and opinions on the pandemic while also feeding a growing audience in need of information and diversion. Given the connection between COVID-19 and anxiety, along with temporal ties between TikTok’s rise to popularity and the COVID-19 pandemic, this study set out to determine whether young adults would experience heightened states of anxiety after exposure to COVID-19-related videos. This was evaluated by exposing an experimental group to a compilation of top COVID-19-related TikToks while a control group was exposed to a compilation of the top non-COVID-19-related TikToks. All participants were then asked to evaluate their anxiety levels on a modified version of the PANAS-X scale. The data gathered from this experiment indicated that COVID-19 content on TikTok does not evoke heightened anxiety in all young adults, but does evoke heightened anxiety in young adults that have received higher levels of vaccination against COVID-19. These findings indicate that demographic information and pre-existing beliefs, such as stances on vaccination, are a determining factor in how young adults respond to TikTok’s COVID-19 content.
IRB Number
# 22-101
Degree
B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.
Date
5-2023
Subject
COVID-19 (Disease)--Psychological aspects; Young adults--Psychology
Name
TikTok (Electronic resource)
Discipline
Social Media
Document Type
Theses
Extent
42 leaves
DCMI Type
Text
Language
English
Rights
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Recommended Citation
Fontaine, Nicholas, "The effects of TikTok's COVID-19 content on anxiety in young adults" (2023). Honors Theses.
https://scholar.utc.edu/honors-theses/410
The experimental TikTok compilation provided to members of the experimental group.
Control TikTok Collection.mp4 (25307 kB)
The control TikTok compilation provided to members of the control group.
Department
Dept. of Communication