*2.3. Feelings About the Future during the Pandemic*

At the time of writing, the pandemic is still ongoing and affecting people's lives holistically. While the prospect of a vaccine provides a sense of relief for some, there is still a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about when and how the pandemic is going to end and whether lives will return to the pre-pandemic normal. These feelings are not easy to tease apart, as they are deeply intertwined with the economic, societal, and psychological consequences of the pandemic [48].

These feelings are also related to the perceived threat of the pandemic. An online study conducted in June 2020 during a lockdown measure investigated the relationships among perceived threat of COVID-19, future anxiety, and subjective well-being [49]. Results indicated that perceived threat negatively predicted subjective well-being, and this relationship was mediated by anxious feelings about the future. Another online study conducted in early May 2020 investigated the relationships among personality traits, perceived stress during the pandemic, perceived threat of contracting COVID-19, and perceived efficacy to prevent COVID-19 [50]. Results showed that higher neuroticism was associated with higher levels of pandemic-related stress, and this relationship was mediated by perceived threat and efficacy. Similarly, higher extraversion was associated with higher pandemic-related stress.

There have also been studies that examined the effect of media exposure on COVIDrelated fear and worries. An online study conducted in mid-March 2020 investigated the relationships among fear of COVID-19, intolerance of uncertainty, worry, anxiety, personal relevance of the threat, and media exposure (sources of COVID-19 information); results indicated that media exposure through regular and social media, tendency to worry about health, and risk for loved ones predicted increased fear of COVID-19 [51]. Another study conducted in early April 2020 had participants recall their media sources (i.e., government, commercial, foreign, and social media) from late January to February during the pandemic in China while responding to questions about media traumatization and anxiety due to the pandemic. Most of the survey respondents spent 1-3 h per day watching or hearing COVID-19 information and repeated media exposure led to higher levels of anxiety as well as media traumatization [52]. These findings suggest that the subjective feelings about the pandemic, such as anxiety, may be influenced by a number of psychosocial factors, personality traits, and media exposure. This paper was designed to further investigate the influence of media types for news information or social purposes on subjective feelings about the pandemic.

#### *2.4. Study Objectives*

Based on the past literature, this paper focused on two consequences of ICT use during the pandemic: social connectedness and feelings about the future. Specifically, we explored how ICT use, behavioral and psychosocial responses during the pandemic, personality traits, and demographic factors influenced perceived importance of social connectedness and perceived future anxiety.

#### **3. Materials and Methods**

An online, anonymous survey was used for this work. This study received the Institution Review Board approval from the authors' university. This survey was posted on Mechanical Turk during the afternoon of April 21st and the morning of April 22nd, 2020; during this time, 42 states and territories in the U.S. had issued mandatory stay-at-home orders [53].
