The Relationship Between Social Media and Parental Influence on High School Students’ Attitude Toward Receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine

With the emergence of COVID-19, the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, in particular, has become highly debatable. Influences on vaccine opinions come from various outside sources, social media and parental influence being primary contributors. The content consumed and ideas formed by students regarding the current pandemic may cause those students to view the effects of COVID-19 from different perspectives. The purpose of this project was to analyze how two factors-social media and parental guidance-influence students\u27 personal opinions about vaccination. This understanding of external influences and their effect on a younger audience may ultimately contribute to the health of later generations. It was hypothesized that as the role of parental influence on a student decreased and social media use increased, the students’ urgency to receive the COVID-19 vaccine would increase. Additionally, it was hypothesized that after reading a given educational source students who are more influenced by social media would have more urgency to be vaccinated compared to students influenced more by their parents. Through the use of an online survey, students were asked to rate their hesitancy and urgency in percentage form along with a ranked, Likert-based scale before and after reading the provided material. They were asked to evaluate where they receive the majority of their information, from parents or social media. It was found that the educational material had a significant effect on both hesitancy; t(81)=-3.9, p\u3c0.0001 and urgency; t(81)=-44.1, p\u3c0.0001 towards receiving the COVID-19 vaccination