Trust in Online Information and Psychological Well-Being

Trust towards the media can have profound effects not only on civic life but also on the psychological well-being of a person. Studies focused on this problem can often contain controversial conclusions. Some researchers acknowledge that online information is more trustworthy than their traditional media counterparts, others argue that online media is losing its audience due to problems with privacy, inaccuracy, and reliability. The impact of the media content on the psycho-emotional state of a person has been actively studied throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It was proven that the media significantly influenced the mental health of the population, especially the levels of fear, anxiety and stress. However, the question of the correlations between the level of trust in information and the psychological well-being of a person remains unclear. The present study was designed to clarify the relationship between the credibility towards online information and the psychological wellbeing in young people. The study involved 456 students from the State University of Humanity and Social Studies (M = 116, F = 340, mean age 19.7 +/- 2.8). The cross-sectional study was used to detect differences in psychological well-being between groups of students with trust/no trust in online media. To measure levels of psycho-emotional well-being the Anxiety Integrative Test; the World Assumptions Scale; the Scale of Psychological Well-being; COPE Inventory were used. The level of trust towards the media was measured with the author's questionnaire. The results of the study showed: (1) students who trust online media information are more likely to have emotional and personal problems that reduce their level of psychological well-being: anxiety about the future, depression, negative self-esteem; (2) psychological well-being of young people, regardless of the level of trust towards online information, is closely related to "strong" "Self" value and functional strategies for coping with stress; (3) for those who trust online information a more important place in the factor structure of psychological well-being aligns to the domain of basic beliefs, while for those who do not trust online media alignment is more towards coping strategies; (4) the main correlates of a low level of psychological well-being are anxiety, low self-esteem and the use of emotional coping strategies. The psycho-emotional problems of students who trust online information are enhanced by turning to the coping strategy of emotional/social support. The balance of well-being in people who do not trust online information can be disturbed by "crisis of beliefs". The imbalance of the sample by sex and its relative homogeneity in age may be seen as study limitation.