More health anxiety in social media and E-society? A mediated structural equation model

In E-society, misinformation has gradually pervaded the social media landscape. Online misinformation causes people's health anxiety since it cannot be easily verified compared to traditional news. However, there is few research to investigate which psychological factors may contribute to health misinformation susceptibility of social media platform users. We integrated social support, gratitude, rumination and misinformation dissemination with people's health anxiety in our 525(Mage=25.2, SDage=6.53) participants online survey. The results suggested that online social support has negative influences on decreasing health anxiety, social media rumination and misinformation dissemination are at the core of increasing anxiety, and gratitude practice may be the key approach that can alleviate negative emotional experiences among adolescents. This research provides insights into media psychology study in social media and E-society. Future research is proposed to further investigate the longitudinal relationships with these psychological variables.