By: Rachel Boorse

I always thought I knew what my college experience was going to look like. I would attend club fairs, make friends from my in-person classes, and have girls from my hall over for movie nights. After all, college is supposed to be the best four years of your life.

Enter the COVID-19 pandemic.

What was supposed to be the beginning of four wonderful years ended up being an awful start. I was isolated in my dorm room, not able to let anyone, even the girls across the hall into my room out of fear that we would all get COVID. Classes were not much better, and being on Zoom all day was exhausting. I felt both stranded and lonely in Nashville, 800 miles away from my support system back home in Philly. This college experience was not what I imagined it to be and was a constant source of stress.

I was stressed about whether the COVID-19 pandemic was going to change how I always pictured my life to be. As a result, I had all these anxious and trying feelings inside of me yet was unable to get them out.

I know I am not the only person who felt this way due to the chaotic times.

In response to chaos, people are inclined to reach out to others. But the way we talk about our stress and support is important.

Researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California published a study on COVID-19 effects of self-disclosure on both social media and parental support. Lichen Zhen and her colleagues researched whether disclosing how you feel about stress and having parental support can moderate an individual’s stress caused by COVID-19.

The researchers surveyed 215 undergraduate students about their self-disclosure and levels of parental support.

Participants rated statements describing their self-disclosure levels such as “I share information on any topic I consider interesting on social networks throughout the day” and “I only share certain private information with some members of my social networks.” They distinguished between peripheral and core self-disclosure. Peripheral self-disclosure is the willingness to share general personal interests and daily updates to his or her entire social media audience. In contrast, core self-disclosure is when an individual is willing to disclose more sensitive personal information online, but limits that information to a certain number of close friends.

Participants also rated statements regarding their stress levels from COVID-19 as well as the level of parental support through statements such as “because of COVID-19, how often have you been stressed?” and “my parent(s) gives me information to help me understand a situation.”

Zhen and her colleagues’ findings are striking.

College students who use core self-disclosure on social media and students who had a high-level of support from their parents both had significantly lower stress levels as compared to their peers who used peripheral self-disclosure. There was also no direct relationship between peripheral self-disclosure and perceived stress, demonstrating that there was no change in stress level with the use of peripheral self-disclosure.

This shows that the way in which one discloses information can actually affect one’s stress level. If you were to share an Instagram post about your stress with all your followers, that would not be as effective at reducing your stress as texting in a small group on Instagram or Snapchat.

Furthermore, individuals who have support from parents also have moderated the effects of COVID-19 related stress, meaning having supportive parents is effective for reducing stress levels.

With all that information, the next time you think about sharing a post regarding your stress to your entire social media audience, take a second, and think about whether posting it to everyone will help reduce your stress. Instead of disclosing everything you’re feeling to all your followers, I encourage you to share your feelings of stress with your close friends using the close friends feature on social media. Additionally, consider talking to your parents and asking them for support because having a mom or dad listen and support you during this difficult time will help you more than you realize. Overall, my advice is to find your “core” support group.