Problematic News Consumption and Its Relationship to Mental and Physical Health: A Replication Study

Health Commun. 2024 Dec 2:1-9. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2024.2434955. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

McLaughlin, Gotlieb, and Mills introduced the concept of problematic news consumption (PNC) in their 2023 study, finding that those classified as having severely problematic news consumption (16.5% of the sample) exhibited significantly greater levels of mental and physical ill-being. These results were the product of a single cross-sectional survey, however. Using a two-wave longitudinal survey, we sought to replicate their findings. In the current study, we found support for the factor structure of the PNC scale and the 4-profile solution, although the severely problematic news consumption profile represented a substantially smaller portion of the sample (7.5%) than in the initial study. Additionally, we found support for greater levels of mental and physical ill-being among those in the severely problematic news consumption profile in the Wave 1 cross-sectional model. However, while we found greater levels of mental ill-being among these participants in the autoregressive model, we did not find greater levels of physical ill-being.