Does Mobile Social Media Undermine Our Romantic Relationships? The Influence of Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) On Young People’ Romantic Relationship

Abstract The widespread use of social media has a trans-formative effect on people’s work and lives. With the increasing information explosion and more cases of social media addiction, users have been always worried that they have missed some information. FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) of mobile users emerges. FoMO has affected users’ interpersonal relationship and behavior in the offline environment, especially for post-90s generation users (people born in the 1990’s). This paper explores the impact of FoMO of post-90s generation mobile users on romantic relationship in the context of social media. The sample size is 274 subjects. By using questionnaire survey and regression analysis, the impacts of FoMO on romantic relationship were analyzed from the perspectives of three dimensions of FoMO: cognitive, emotional and behavioral manifestations. Results show that behavioral manifestation of FoMO has a significant negative effect on romantic relationships, while emotional and cognitive manifestations of FoMO have no significant effects on romantic relationships. This paper enriches the research on the effects of psychology and information behavior of mobile social media users on their interpersonal relationship.