1. Introduction
Media, depressed, ’
EVENTS
Background: Media affects the trajectory of many individuals’ mental health—with media news, individuals experience negative bias more than positive bias. However, there is also evidence of an age-related positivity effect, with negativity bias generally fading with age. With the rise of COVID-19 cases, older adults (aged 55 years and older) who consume media frequently are at a high risk for declining mental health. To date, there has been no research on the positivity vs. negativity bias of media news on older adults. Here, we investigated whether positivity or negativity bias plays a larger role in affecting how older adults react to COVID-19 news. Methods: Sixty-nine older adults (aged 55–95) answered questions about their weekly media consumption and how closely they followed news relating to COVID-19. They also completed a general health questionnaire. They were then randomly assigned to read either positive or negative COVID-19 news (Past studies suggested that individuals are affected more by negative rather than by positive events or stimuli [Regardless of the differing theoretical accounts, negativity bias appears to be common and relevant across all human populations and becomes even more prevalent when individuals consume media. For example, negative news tends to disproportionately grab readers’ attention, while good news is treated as no news [However, there is also evidence of an age-related positivity effect, signifying that the negativity bias in youth fades with age. For example, the socio-emotional selectivity theory proposes that the perception of time influences an individual’s decision-making [When exposed to the immense stress of negative COVID-19 news, a person’s mental health may be affected. For example, ref. [To date, no research has been conducted that focuses on older adults (age 55+) and investigates whether a positivity or negativity bias plays a larger role in affecting the way older adults react to COVID-19 news. Thus, in this study, we seek to investigate how and to what degree media reports concerning positive and negative COVID-19 news affect older adults’ mental health and emotional reactions (measured by the General Health Questionnaire, GHQ-12, and a self-reported survey; see the Methods section for more details). Based on past studies, we designed our study to examine whether 1) the more frequently older adults consume media and follow COVID-19 news, the more they feel unhappy and depressed, and 2) reading positive COVID-19 news leads older adults to feel more happy more than reading negative COVID-19 news would lead them to feel unhappy (positivity bias). 