Meta-Analysis Website Detailing The Impact of COVID-19 and Social Media On Social Anxiety Disorder in College Students
The reason why this website was made was due to my own struggles with social anxiety and how I noticed that following the COVID-19 lockdowns, there seemed to be an overall apprehension in college students concerning face-to-face interactions. So the purpose of this website was to take the jargon dense academic research papers and journals, and put them into a language that most college students would be able to understand. I also wanted to show college students that it was okay to feel anxious going back out into the public following a long period of lockdowns and isolation where social media was the only way to contact friends and relatives.
These two pages of my website are information pages dedicated to talking about what is Social Anxiety Disorder is. The first page is dedicated to summarizing the definition of Social Anxiety, the potential causes, and the symptoms of the disorder. This is to help educate people on the difference between social anxiety and general anxiety. The second page is dedicated to talking about the diagnosis of social anxiety disorder. It summarizes how it is diagnosed and who can professionally diagnose it. It also discusses treatment options that are used by professionals to help reduce the symptoms of social anxiety.
One of the biggest impacts to have recently occurred to college students is the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. During this time, college students who had been living in dorms were now forced to move back home during the middle of their spring semester and had to quickly adjust to an online class schedule. In the summer of 2020, students still had to stay at home due to travel restrictions all over the country and when the fall semester started back up, colleges forced mandatory isolation, travel restrictions, and hybrid class schedules to reduce the spread of the virus in close quarter dormitories. This webpage is dedicated to taking the research done on the impact from the lockdowns and translate it into language that all college students can read to understand that there was an overall increase in symptoms of social anxiety following the lockdown isolation period. A positive impact was that therapy options became more available as therapists had to move to an online system to still meet with patients. This made appointments more available to students with social anxiety to stay in their safe spaces while still receiving help.
The other big impact on college students is social media and the increased usage of various platforms. Social media has had some positive impact for people with social anxiety as they now have another way of speaking and meeting new people without talking face-to-face. Platforms such as Discord, Snapchat, and Instagram make it so that students can post pictures or statuses while having time to think about what it is they want to say in their own space anonymously instead being surrounded by lots of people while trying to talk. However, social media has had a negative impact in that this is another platform in which symptoms of social anxiety can increase. Part of Social Anxiety Disorder is the fear of being negatively judged or humiliated by the public. So while the anonymity can help the student feel as though they can speak up more, it also means others on the internet can judged their posts and even people they do know can cause these symptoms to increase.
