Fear of Missing Out and Relational Aggression on Facebook.

The use of social networking sites has been associated with fear of missing out (FOMO), which is characterized by perceiving others as having more rewarding lives. This study investigated whether FOMO is related to Facebook relational aggression through a desire to avoid inferiority and engagement in manipulative behaviors. Facebook users (N = 190, 87 percent women) completed an online survey assessing FOMO, striving to avoid inferiority, interpersonal manipulation, and Facebook relational aggression. Serial mediation analysis demonstrated that higher levels of FOMO were associated with increased desire to avoid inferiority, which in turn was associated with higher levels of interpersonal manipulation and subsequent higher reported rates of Facebook relational aggression. The research considers how FOMO is associated with socially aversive Facebook behavior to meet psychosocial needs deficits.

Social network engagement and subjective well-being: a life-course perspective.

Social networking is a digital phenomenon embraced by billions worldwide. Use of online social platforms has the potential to generate a number of benefits including to well-being from enhanced social connectedness and social capital accumulation, but is also associated with several negative behaviours and impacts. Employing a life-course perspective, this paper explores social networking use and its relationship with measures of subjective well-being. Large-scale UK panel data from wave 3 (2011-12) and 6 (2014-15) of Understanding Society reveals that social network users are on average younger, aged under 25, but that rising use is reported across the life-course including into old age. Probit, multinomial logistic, and ANCOVA and change-score estimations reveal that membership, and greater use, of social networks is associated with higher levels of overall life satisfaction. However, heavy use of social networking sites has negative impacts, reflected in reductions in subjective well-being. Socio-economic disadvantage may drive these impacts among young (in education), unemployed and economically inactive heavy SNS users.

Online social network data as sociometric markers.

Data from online social networks carry enormous potential for psychological research, yet their use and the ethical implications thereof are currently hotly debated. The present work aims to outline in detail the unique information richness of this data type and, in doing so, to support researchers when deciding on ethically appropriate ways of collecting, storing, publishing, and sharing data from online sources. Focusing on the very nature of social networks, their structural characteristics, and depth of information, we provide a detailed and accessible account of the challenges associated with data management and data storage. In particular, the general nonanonymity of network data sets is discussed, and an approach is developed to quantify the level of uniqueness that a particular online network bestows upon the individual maintaining it. Using graph enumeration techniques, we show that comparatively sparse information on a network is suitable as a sociometric marker that allows for the identification of an individual from the global population of online users. The impossibility of anonymizing specific types of network data carries implications for ethical guidelines and research practice. At the same time, network uniqueness opens up opportunities for novel research in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record