Early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic introduced a change in communication norms in regard to well-being. People traversed through different forms of communication to adapt to policies and regulations that limited in-person interactions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Social interactions have been found to be an innate human need, important to one’s health and well-being. The study looked at the relationship between socializing and well-being during the state of the COVID-19 pandemic. Socializing variables consisted of remote and in-person socializing which in-person socializing was divided into two distinct categories. In-person socializing was divided into in-person safe socializing, indicating socializing that was safe from the risk of contracting the virus, and in-person unsafe socializing which indicates that socializing was at risk of contracting the virus. Additionally, the current study also investigated how age moderates this relationship between socializing and well-being. SEM analyses reported that in-person unsafe socializing has a significant positive association with well-being outcomes: anxiety and depression which indicate high levels of anxiety and depression with increased in-person unsafe socializing. The study also found remote socializing to have a significant positive association with the well-being outcome: positive affect, indicating increased levels of positive affect with increased remote socializing. Regression analyses looked at moderation by age, finding no significant interactions of age between socializing and well-being. Findings suggest the beneficial role of remote socializing and although remote socializing cannot replace in-person interactions, it serves as a supplemental resource during unpredictable events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to explore birth order effects on personality and how they influence field of study, academic self-efficacy, and future self-identification. The research aims to replicate past findings on birth order and personality variation while further exploring how birth order affects field of study, academic self-efficacy, and future self-identification. Furthermore, the research study will examine if personality variation mediates the relationship between birth order and field of study, academic self-efficacy, and future self-identification. The research sample (N=90) was used to explore these concepts. Lastly, the research will investigate within families, if birth order predicts differences in personality, academic self-efficacy, and future self-identification using 13 sibling pair results. The researchers recruited participants to complete self-reports of birth order, variable measures, and demographics using a survey on Qualtrics survey software through social media channels during the Fall and Spring of 2022 - 2023. The study yielded very few implications for birth order and personality variation, and how they influence fields of study, academic self-efficacy, and future self-identification. Further exploration of birth order and personality as they relate to field of study, academic self-efficacy, and future self-identification is necessary as it may positively contribute to parental expectations, parent-child relationships, and parental understanding of differences of goals and interests among siblings. Furthermore, future studies should investigate factors that may change birth order effects on personality such as evolving social standards, family size, and culture shifts.

Online dating apps are prevalent within dating culture, but they are also forms of social media. Although the way in which people use these apps might be more targeted than other forms of social media, it seems likely that the problems associated with social media could very well apply to dating apps too. However, this is an empirical question that begs a scientific and systematic investigation. Dating apps have a number of unique dynamics, such as being centered around romantic relationships with the users on the service and judging & being judged by others. Self-objectification, a form of extreme public self-awareness, has been tied to both social media usage and more recently to dating app usage. Prior research examining self-objectification within and between dating app users has been inconclusive; it is not clear whether more frequent dating app usage predicts self-objectification or not. The current study aimed to clarify the relationship between dating app usage and self-objectification. Data were collected from 174 college students who were active dating app users. They were polled on their frequency of dating app usage and given a self-administered self-objectification inventory online. Findings show that self-objectification differs significantly across dating app usage groups. Additionally, a moderation effect of race was found. For white participants, the more frequently they used data app, the more self-objectification they reported. For non-white participants, there was a nonlinear relationship between data app usage and self-objectification. Among non-white dating app users, low and high dating app usage groups reported higher self-objectification than the moderate dating app usage group. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed to hopefully offer insights into the relationships between dating app usage and self-objectification.

As the use of social media becomes more prevalent, especially in adolescents and young adults, there is a growing need to understand how social media use affects psychological well-being in the emerging adult population. Prior research has found that exposure to nature reduces stress and increases attention in comparison to urban environments, but nature has not been studied as a way to reduce the potentially negative effects of social media. The current study aimed to determine if viewing social media or nature for a brief time affected psychological well-being, social comparisons, future self-identification, and awe, and to test whether viewing nature scenes could buffer the effects of viewing social media. Data was collected from 275 participants using a survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results showed that emerging adults exposed to nature scenes had significantly less negative affect compared to those exposed to their social media feeds. Exploratory analyses showed that those who spent more time outside tended to experience decreased negative affect when they viewed both social media and nature photos, but those who spent more time outside experienced increased negative affect when only viewing social media. Those who used social media more often generally experienced lower negative affect. Findings show that relations between humans, social media, and nature, are complex, and further research into these relations and their underlying causes may be beneficial.

In the past year, considerable misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic has circulated on social media platforms. Faced with this pervasive issue, it is important to identify the extent to which people are able to spot misinformation on social media and ways to improve people’s accuracy in spotting misinformation. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate people’s accuracy in spotting misinformation, the effectiveness of a game-based intervention, and the role of political affiliation in spotting misinformation. In this study, 235 participants played a misinformation game in which they evaluated COVID-19-related tweets and indicated whether or not they thought each of the tweets contained misinformation. Misinformation accuracy was measured using game scores, which were based on the correct identification of misinformation. Findings revealed that participants’ beliefs about how accurate they are at spotting misinformation about COVID-19 did not predict their actual accuracy. Participants’ accuracy improved after playing the game, but democrats were more likely to improve than republicans.