DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0cfxpnw32
title: Effect of social media on mental health during Covid-19 lockdowns in India

description: As the COVID-19 pandemic restricted individuals to their houses for a
 substantial amount of time, people took to the virtual world to stay
 connected with their peers, family and friends. Likewise, news channels
 and other forms of electronic media also witnessed a steep rise in
 viewership all across the globe. That being said, social media has led to
 adverse impacts on the mental health of individuals through addiction,
 stress, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress syndromes. The
 primary objective of this data is to analyze both the positive and
 negative effects of social media usage on individuals during an
 unprecedented global lockdown. Existing literature has found significant
 connections between the use of social media and mental health during
 extensive periods of lockdown (Swarnam. S., 2021; Pragholapat, A., 2020.,
 Hong, W. et al., 2020). This dataset is used to understand the extent of
 depression and anxiety experienced by persons restricted to stay-at-home
 confinements during the deadly second wave of Covid-19 lockdown in India.
 Information has also been collected to associate social media usage during
 a lockdown and suicidal tendencies if any.
description: Written informed consent
 was obtained from the study participants, and the authors conducted
 structured interviews using Google forms. The data was collected using a
 questionnaire which was saved digitally and later used for analysis. In
 particular, the questionnaire asked a few generic questions (Columns B-E)
 about gender, age-range (in completed years), social media platforms used
 by the subjects, time spent on social media (in hours). Among the 136
 respondents who had willingly participated in the study, 55.14% (n=75)
 were males, and 44.85% (n=61) were females. Most of the respondents were
 from the age group 18-21 years (44.85%). About 99% of the respondents
 (n=135) reported using WhatsApp, followed by Youtube (82%) and Facebook
 (77%).  The
 second part of the questionnaire was based on questions relating to the
 association of mental health and social media usage (Columns F-Q) - if
 they have faced mental health issues, if subjects talk about their mental
 health on social media, and so on. 24.26% of the respondents (n=33)
 believed that Twitter was the most helpful social media website for
 opening up on mental health. The sample data presented an alarming rate of
 32.35% (n=44) of the people who have faced mental health issues during the
 lockdown. Out of these, only about 66% preferred to confront mental health
 issues directly, whereas 4% chose social media to discuss mental health.
 More detailed information on the behaviour of respondents while dealing
 with mental health crises of themselves and their acquaintances can be
 found in the dataset.
description: The missing values in Columns O and Q are denoted by
 'NA'. The missing values correspond to the situation when the
 subjects have not come across social media posts or suicidal status during
 Coivd-19 and thus did not face any situation which required their
 help.