Estefan Lopez

Estefan Lopez University of Colorado Denver PSYC 3090-002 Dr. Withrow April 11, 2021 Introduction Experiencing a pandemic during a time period where the use of technology is involved in our everyday lives can have its benefits and disadvantages. Our goal is to investigate the relationship between media exposure and outlook on life. As a group, we will evaluate time spent on media, type of media, frequency of media engagement, and genre of news in relation to levels of optimism and pessimism using part of a previously standardized questionnaire on life orientation. We predict that increased engagement with the media will be associated with higher levels of pessimism. Our group reviewed a total of 16 articles, which fall into 3 different themes; media leading to depression, stress and mental Health. Mental health Mass media is connected to the increasing mental health issues. Due to the pandemic, the time spend in watching television and browsing through social media has greatly increased making it easy for the media to control our emotions, behaviour and view of life. People have different objectives of posting content on social media; some post to attract attention while others provide emotional support. The outcome of these posts can grant social support or trigger mental health symptoms. It means not all media activities contribute to mental issues since some are beneficial. Mass media has influential effect on our prospects and objectives in life. It influences mental health since it impacts our thinking, behaviour, and emotions (Srivastava et. al, 2018). The way we use the media determines our expectations and standards for our way of life, for instance people in India are increasingly using new media technology to stay in touch with family and friends, to use it for business, for entertainment, and also acquiring information about national/world events (Srivastava et. al, 2018). It is also evident that the use of media is increasing and becoming persistent after the exposure of COVID-19 pandemic (Stainback et. al, 2020). Many people across the globe began watching or reading news about the current pandemic with the objective of learning about the virus, precautions and latest development from health organisations. With the lockdown, using the media has become a constant activity that has been proven to negatively affect a person’s mental health (Stainback et. al, 2020). This is due to the daily updates about the dead and deteriorating economy that causes people to over think and experience mental torture to the listeners.