Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between generalised trust and psychological well-being in college students, considering the social support obtained from their social networks via Twitter and face-to-face (FTF) interactions. Initially, the authors planned to collect data at the beginning of the first semester in 2019 for fine-tuning the model as a pilot study, and in 2020 for the main study. However, due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the data helped authors to analyse changes in young people's psychological situation before and during the pandemic in Japan.Design/methodology/approach: The study conducted a self-report survey targeting college students in the Kanto region in Japan. Data were collected from mid-May to the end of June 2019, as well as in early to mid-June 2020, with 304 and 584 responses, respectively. The collected data were analysed using structural equation modelling and a multiple regression analysis.Findings: The findings using the 2019 data set indicated that (a) students mostly used Twitter for information gathering and sharing of hobbies, and they received both informatics and emotional support from Twitter, and from FTF interactions; (b) there were direct positive effects of generalised trust and social skills on their psychological well-being; and (c) students with lower levels of generalised trust tended to interact with very intimate individuals using Twitter to obtain social support, which did not have any effects on their improvement of psychological well-being. From the 2020 data set, the authors also found that, like 2019, generalised trust and social skills had direct effects on the improvement of psychological well-being. Additionally, we observed that students spent more time using Twitter and received more emotional support from it, as most people tried not to meet other people in person due to the first State of Emergency in Japan. Similarly, the authors found that in 2019, only social support from very intimate partners via FTF communication had slightly significant effects on improving their psychological well-being, whereas in 2020, their expectation for social networks via FTF had decreased their levels of psychological well-being, but their social support from Twitter had slightly significant effects on their improvement of psychological well-being. One of the main reasons for this might be due to the challenge of meeting with others in person, and therefore, social support from Twitter partially played a role that traditionally was only beneficial through FTF communication.Originality/value: We understand that this is one of the few social psychological studies on social media that collected data both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides unique evidence in demonstrating how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed college students communication behaviours.

This study investigated how personal characteristics such as generalized trust, self-consciousness and friendship, and desire for self-presentation are related to the subjective well-being of university students who use Twitter in Japan, including the effects of their online communication skills. We conducted a survey in May 2021 with Twitter users and analyzed their log data between January 2019 and June 2021. The log data of 501 Twitter users, including the number of public tweets, retweets, and emotional expressions among different patterns of social media (e.g., Twitter only, Twitter + Instagram, Twitter + LINE + Instagram, etc.) and academic standings, were analyzed using ANOVA and stepwise regression analyses. The results showed that the number of tweets and retweets, with and without photos/videos, increased in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019, and the ratio of positive sentences remained almost the same for the two-and-a-half-year period of this study. However, the proportion of negative sentences increased slightly. It is clear that the factors which affected the university students’ subjective well-being differed depending on the respective patterns of social media use.

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened concerns about health and safety, leading people to seek information to protect themselves from infection. Even before the pandemic, false health information was spreading on social media. We conducted a review of recent literature in health and social sciences and proposed a theoretical model to understand the factors influencing the spread of false health information. Our focus was on how false health information circulated before and during the pandemic, impacting people’s perceptions of believing information on social media. We identified four possible strategies to counteract the negative effects of false health information: prebunking, refuting, legislation, and media literacy. We argue that improving people’s social media literacy skills is among the most effective ways to address this issue. Our findings provide a basis for future research and the development of policies to minimize the impact of false health information on society.

This study examined the causal relationships between university students’ social media use (e.g., LINE, Twitter (X), Instagram) and their subjective well-being (SWB) in Japan, considering the effects of gender and academic standing. Between May 2021 and May 2022, a two-wave panel survey of university students enrolled in the Kanto region of Japan was conducted. The cross-lagged effects model analysis clarified the following results: (1) Overall, the amount of time spent using LINE decreased the participants’ SWB, which was significant among first-year students. (2) Female students’ amount of time spent using Instagram tended to improve their SWB. (3) SWB had a negative effect on posting frequency on Twitter overall and among male students. (4) Lower SWB led third-year students to use Twitter longer. Data were collected during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, and further analyses were conducted to clarify whether this affected the results. SWB had marginally negative effects on anxiety toward COVID-19 among male Instagram users and female Twitter users. In contrast, anxiety toward COVID-19 had a marginally weak negative effect on SWB among third-year students who used Twitter. These findings suggest that the relationship with SWB may differ according to the type of social media used. These relationships are not limited to specific periods, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, improving the SWB of the younger generations could help prevent excessive Twitter usage. Future education on social media use should consider how social media types affect different causal relationships with SWB among young adults, including the effects of gender and academic standing.

It is suggested that the young generations’ low levels of privacy concerns might lead to undesirable behaviours that have negative effects on their subjective well-being. This study aims to investigate what kind of causal relationship would exist among the young generations’ privacy concerns, protection behaviours and subjective well-being in Japan, considering the effects of demographic factors (age, gender) and Internet access time via computers and smartphones. A two-wave panel survey targeting university students was conducted and 163 responses became the analysed data. The following results were observed: (a) Students’ privacy concerns had positive direct effects on their protection behaviours, along with their time spent accessing the Internet through computers; and (b) Their protection behaviours, as well as their time spent accessing the Internet through computers, had negative direct effects on their subjective well-being.

Purpose: This study explored how the use of different social media is related to subjective well-being among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Design/methodology/approach: We surveyed 1,681 university students in the Kanto region of Japan in May 2021 to investigate how social media use relates to subjective well-being. We also examined the effects of self-consciousness and friendship, self-presentation desire, generalized trust, online communication skills, depression tendency and social support from others. Findings: The responses revealed 15 possible patterns of social media usage on four widely used social media in Japan (LINE, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). We selected users with the top five patterns for further statistical analyses: LINE/Twitter/Instagram/Facebook, LINE/Twitter/Instagram, LINE/Twitter, LINE/Instagram and LINE only. Overall, self-establishment as a factor of self-consciousness and friendship, and social support from others had positive effects on the improvement of subjective well-being, whereas depression tendency had negative effects on their subjective well-being regardless of their usage patterns, of which the results of social support from others and depression tendency were consistent with the results of previous studies. Regarding other factors, they had different effects on subjective well-being due to different patterns. Effects on subjective well-being from self-indeterminate and self-independency as factors of self-consciousness and friendship, praise acquisition, self-appeal and topic avoidance as factors of self-presentation desire were observed. Originality/value: This is among the earliest studies on the relationship between young generations’ social media use and subjective well-being through social media usage patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.