Media Exposure to COVID-19: How Much Is Too Much?
Psychology Today, April 1, 2020
Media Exposure to COVID-19: How Much Is Too Much?
A team of researchers from the School of Social Ecology at The University of California, Irvine have researched the effects of media exposure for the past 20 years. … The researchers state that “repeated media exposure to community crisis can lead to increased anxiety, heightened stress responses that can lead to downstream effects on health, and misplaced health-protective and help-seeking behaviors that can overburden health care facilities and tax available resources.” (Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver & Alison Holman, 2020). They cite as an example of misplaced health-protective behaviors the current hoarding of toilet paper and hand sanitizer that lead to worldwide shortages of these items