Table 3.

Emergent themes and subthemes of the challenging roles of social media identified by long-hauler women.

Theme and subthemes			Exemplar quotes
Social connection
	Anxiety	“They can really increase anxiety.”
	Resentment	“…it was hard. There would be resentment, and there is resentment now with the group, too, as terrible as it sounds, even jealousy, because I will see people that will write on Facebook, like, ‘Oh, like, I had COVID in December 2020’ or ‘I had COVID in January 2021,’ and a part of me just, like, would hate it because it is…like you knew, like people were advising you not to travel. And that would be what it was, especially around the holiday season, hearing people talk about, you know, having so-and-so over from, like, California, and then they got sick afterwards. And, like, it just makes you go crazy because there is so much more now. But I am trying not to, like, think like that because I mean, I do not know everyone’s experiences, and maybe, they really did avoid it or did their best to not get it, and they got it because we are in a pandemic.”
Information gathering
	Misinformation and health literacy	“Sometimes, I can understand a lot of the stuff, but there is some things that I am not as familiar with…”
	Oversaturation and pandemic fatigue	“…after a while, like, even that [social media use] got to be so overwhelming because, again, like, everyone is, like, posting the same thing.”