The Impact Of Smartphone Addiction On Missed Out Anxiety: Moderated Longitudinal Mediation Effec

Fear of missing out is a state of anxiety caused by an individual’s irritability and frustration due to the worry of missing out on exciting content.With the popularity of social media,the fear of missing out has become increasingly common.A foreign survey reported that about 75% of young people have experienced the fear of missing out;15.2% of respondents said that fear of missing out has seriously affected their daily life.It has been found that high levels of fear of missing out can cause individuals to develop non-adaptive problem behaviors such as substance abuse,alcohol addiction,etc.Therefore,how to control individuals’ fear of missing out has become the focus of many researchers.Besides,fear of missing out can be influenced by antecedent variables such as belonging needs and learning motivation.Among the many antecedent variables,smartphone addiction has been a central concern for researchers.Some studies have investigated the internal mechanisms by which antecedent variables such as smartphone addiction influence fear of missing out.However,previous studies have only examined the unidirectional influence relationship between smartphone addiction and fear of missing out,and few studies have used longitudinal studies to explore the interaction relationship between smartphone addiction and fear of missing out as well as the internal mechanism of action between them and their boundary conditions.In this study,a two-time point longitudinal research design was used to survey 384 college students twice at T1/T2 using the Smartphone Addiction Scale for College Students(SAS-C),the Passive Social Network Site Use Scale(PSNSU),the Fear of Missing Out(Fo MOs),and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire-Short Form(FFMQ-SF).Spss22.0 and Mplus8.0 were used to process the data in order to reveal the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of smartphone addiction affecting missing anxiety.The results of this study are as follows.(1)There were significant gender differences in passive social network site use,fear of missing out,and mindfulness,and female had significantly higher levels of passive social network site use,fear of missing out,and mindfulness than male.(2)Between the two measures,smartphone addiction,passive social network site use,fear of missing out,and mindfulness scores were all significantly and positively correlated,demonstrating comparable test equivalence for these variables.(3)There was a cross-lagged relationship between smartphone addiction and fear of missing out,with T1 smartphone addiction significantly predicting T2 fear of missing out,but T1 fear of missing out not significantly predicting T2 smartphone addiction.(4)There was a significant longitudinal mediating effect of passive social networking site use between T1 smartphone addiction and T2 fear of missing out.(5)Mindfulness moderated the longitudinal mediation of passive social network site use between smartphone addiction and fear of missing out.In conclusion,the results of this study suggest that there is a cross-lagged relationship between smartphone addiction and fear of missing out.Passive social network site use mediated the longitudinal relationship between smartphone addiction and fear of missing out,and mindfulness moderated this longitudinal mediation.The results of this study not only reveal the internal mechanism of action of smartphone addiction affecting fear of missing out and its boundary conditions,but also have important practical implications for the intervention of smartphone addiction and fear of missing out.