Funny memes can help people cope with stress of Covid pandemic, study claims 

Internet memes are meant to be humorous but they may also have another positive effect – helping us cope with pandemic stress.

A study of nearly 800 people found those who looked at memes compared to other types of media were more relaxed and cheerful.

And people who saw memes that mentioned the coronavirus were felt less stressed about the pandemic, compared to people who viewed similar images without Covid-related captions.

Lead author Professor Jessica Gall Myrick, from Pennsylvania State University, said: ‘As the pandemic kept dragging on, it became more and more interesting to me how people were using social media, and memes in particular, as a way to think about the pandemic.

‘We found viewing just three memes can help people cope with the stress of living during a global pandemic.’

A swathe of studies have laid bare the impact of Covid and lockdowns on people’s mental health, with stress and anxiety levels thought to be at record highs.

The study involved showing participants three randomly selected memes from a pool of 112 (including the two above) and measuring their moods afterwards

The study, which was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media, measured how nervous or stressed the American participants felt.

Some were then shown three randomly selected memes, while others looked at control conditions with plain text and no images.

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After viewing the media, people were asked to rate what they had seen based on the humour and cuteness.

They were also asked about their levels of anxiety and positive emotions such as calmness, relaxation and cheer, and how much it caused them to think about other information they knew about Covid.

Researchers noticed those who viewed memes compared with other types of media reported higher levels of humour and more positive emotions.

People who saw memes with captions related to coronavirus were even more likely to have lower stress levels about the pandemic than people who viewed memes without Covid-related captions, the study authors claimed.

Professor Myrick said: ‘While the World Health Organization recommended that people avoid too much Covid-related media for the benefit of their mental health, our research reveals that memes about Covid could help people feel more confident in their ability to deal with the pandemic.

‘This suggests that not all media are uniformly bad for mental health and people should stop and take stock of what type of media they are consuming.

‘If we are all more conscious of how our behaviours, including time, spent scrolling, affect our emotional states, then we will better be able to use social media to help us when we need it and to take a break from it when we need that instead.’

It comes after official data last week revealed Britons were more miserable than ever in the first year of the Covid pandemic.

Well-being levels plunged to the lowest figure since records began almost a decade ago.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) report also revealed anxiety rates soared to their highest ever level in the year ending March 2021.

The survey of hundreds of thousands of participants across the UK shows the impact of the first year of the pandemic on British attitudes.

People spent much of the 12-months under stringent measures to control the spread of the coronavirus, meaning they were stuck at home, unable to see loved ones and only allowed to venture outside for exercise once a day or essential shopping.