Boredom proneness and phubbing: Fear of missing out as a mediator

Our purpose was to clarify the relationship between boredom proneness and phubbing behavior, and investigate what role fear of missing out (FOMO) plays in this process. We recruited 751 Chinese vocational college students aged between 18 and 23 years to participate in a questionnaire survey. We used the PROCESS macro version 3.5 for SPSS to analyze the mediating effect, and the results suggested that boredom proneness and FOMO significantly affected phubbing behavior. FOMO played a partial mediating role in the relationship between boredom proneness and phubbing, implying that high boredom proneness increased FOMO, which, in turn, increased phubbing behavior. The two dimensions of FOMO (fear of missing information and fear of missing situations) also had a partial mediating effect on this same relationship. To our knowledge, ours is the first study to practically investigate Chinese vocational college students’ FOMO in relation to boredom proneness and phubbing behavior, which may provide useful information for intervention strategies for reducing phubbing behavior.