ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1645780
This article is part of the Research TopicLong-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health and Well-Being in Education: Underlying Mechanisms and Intervention StrategiesView all 9 articles
Influence of COVID-19 on Social Media Usage: Association with Mental Well-Being in Undergraduate Students
Provisionally accepted
- 1Crandall University, Moncton, Canada
- 2Hubei Engineering University, Xiaogan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: During the Covid-19 pandemic, social media usage was rapidly accelerated by increased social isolation due to public health measures that attempted to limit the spread of the virus. Even though numerous studies indicate that increased screen usage during the pandemic is associated with negative mental health outcomes, there is no consensus on the effect of social media apps on mental health. This study investigated the impact of Covid-19 on the mental health of students attending a privately funded Christian university on their social media usage. Methods: The data used for this primary research was collected using a cross-sectional survey involving 36.5% of the full-time undergraduates in the traditional Art Business and Science (ABS) undergraduate program at a privately funded Canadian Christian university. Findings: Consistent with previous research, an increase in social media use and its detrimental impact on people's mental health during Covid-19 that we identified indicates that social media greatly impacts undergraduates' lives. Covid-19 aggravated social media usage in student groups with a lower mental health status. Nevertheless, moderate social media use on specific social platforms can promote mental health against social isolation and stress generated by the pandemic. In the post-Covid era, the remnant pandemic impact was higher for participants with low mental health status. Furthermore, during the pandemic, religion appeared to be a protective factor against excessive screen use on social media. Originality: This study examined the use of social media in a Christian university context and highlighted the effect of religion on the screen time of social media among students. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such study.
Keywords: Screen usage, Social Media, Mental Health, undergraduates, Christian university
Received: 12 Jun 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Gray, Sparkes, Hack-Polay and Ban. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dieu Hack-Polay, dieu.hack-polay@crandallu.ca
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.