Social media exposure during lockdown may have triggered emotional overeating due to heightened anxiety

PsyPost ^ | October 103, 2021 | Beth Ellwood

[CheshireTheCat]

New research published in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being sheds light on how personality, social media exposure, and anxiety interact to influence people’s eating behavior during the pandemic. The findings point to a pathway whereby high neuroticism paves the way for greater anxiety in response to social media exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in turn, increased emotional overeating.

The premise for the study came from evidence suggesting that the pandemic has coincided with changes in people’s eating behavior. This link may be unsurprising, since anxiety has increased worldwide during the pandemic, and negative emotions like anxiety can trigger emotional eating. Emotional eating is defined as eating in response to emotions rather than hunger.

Study authors Yuan Gao and team suggest that social media may play an important role in this equation since exposure to social media has been associated with increased anxiety during the pandemic. They further suggested a role for personality, since not everyone responds to stress in the same fashion. For example, people high in neuroticism respond more intensely to stress and are particularly likely to turn to emotional eating as a coping mechanism.

To explore these ideas, the researchers analyzed data from a large Chinese study investigating people’s eating behavior, sleeping habits, physical activity, and emotions. Three weeks into strict lockdown, between February 17 and 27, 2020, over 1,000 participants from 32 Chinese provinces responded to online questionnaires.

Participants were asked how many hours they spend per day on social media reading information related to COVID-19. They also indicated the degree that they have felt certain negative emotions since the start of the pandemic (e.g., depressed, irritable, anxious)....

[CheshireTheCat]

This is true of the people I work with. I saw them last month for the first time in a year. Man, had some of them really porked up.

[madison10]

I did well over the lockdown, lost weight even. It was the election that messed with my brain and emotions.

[EEGator]

Same. I just kept drinking heavily and doing coke.
Pounds came right off...

[DennisR]

“Social media” is a malignant societal cancer. On the outside, it looks great. On the inside, it is - in my opinion - run by Satan himself and his minions. It is especially harmful to teenagers who are trying to find their way in this world.

[wgmalabama]

Twins glad I’m not alone. Except the coke part.

[EEGator]

Just joking. I don’t even drink anymore.
I did a lot of walking(in nature) and meditating during lockdown.

[Veto!]

I’m small to begin with and lost 5 more pounds when our IDIOT governor closed the gyms where healthy people go to stay healthy. Without that daily workout, I wasn’t hungry at all, had to remind myself to eat. Still not hungry now that life is back to some semblance of normal. Gotta eat more potatoes. Yum.

[madison10]

Haha.