Abstract
Abstract Social media influencers who use video blogging, so-called “vloggers,” are highly popular among adolescents. Receiving video updates on a constant basis may not only serve adolescents’ informational or entertainment needs, but also fuel their fear of missing out (FoMO), which can lower their social well-being in the long term. Supportive communication with parents about digital media use might be an important resource in preventing these negative outcomes. This study used a national quota-based two-wave panel survey of early adolescents between 10 and 14 years (NT2 = 384) to investigate the influence of adolescents’ perceived quality of communication with their parents on the relation between following vloggers, FoMO, and social well-being. Findings of an autoregressive panel model revealed that supportive communication with parents decreased early adolescents’ FoMO directly and prevented them from experiencing FoMO in response to following vloggers. Higher levels of FoMO in turn resulted in lower social well-being over time.
Highlights
Following Social Media Influencers in Early Adolescence: Fear of Missing Out, Social Well-Being and Supportive Communication with Parents
We found that fear of missing out (FoMO) at T1 had a significant negative influence on social well-being at T2, b = -0.10, SE = 0.04, β = -.12, p = .020, which supports H2
We found support for this assumption, as our findings showed that those early adolescents who followed vloggers on a regularly basis in the first survey wave indicated higher levels of FoMO related to their social media activities in the second survey wave
Summary
Following Social Media Influencers in Early Adolescence: Fear of Missing Out, Social Well-Being and Supportive Communication with Parents. Algorithms select automatic recommendations, which appear alongside the video viewers are currently watching (Smith et al, 2018) This continuous stream of new information is likely to fuel the feeling of missing out on something important, so-called fear of missing out (FoMO). Adolescents (i.e., between 10 and 14 years) are prone to experience FoMO for two reasons: First, early adolescents have been found to be more susceptible to immediate rewards than older adolescents or adults (van Deursen et al, 2015) Influencers provide such rewarding experiences by sharing personal stories and intimate feelings (Berryman & Kavka, 2018), which leave their followers eager to constantly receive updates (Jin, 2018; see Russel et al, 2006). In the context of adolescents’ use of social media influencers’ content, the role of supportive parental communication remains unexplored (but see Lin et al, 2019 for parents’ perspective on social media influencers)
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