Project Director

Doyle, Kevin

Department Examiner

Howell, Ashley

Department

Dept. of Psychology

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic implores consideration for how the psychopathological constructs the fear of missing out, anxiety, and loneliness are affected within this context (Liverant et al., 2004; Rajkumar, 2020). These mental well-being variables also all appear in association with social media (Hunt et al., 2018; Caplan, 2007). While previous research has explored the initial impacts of the pandemic on mental well-being (Wang, Pan et al., 2020; Bu et al., 2020), this research further examines the effect on college students’ mental well-being in the pandemic alongside social media usage. I hypothesize that levels of the fear of missing out, anxiety, and loneliness in college students will be higher during the COVID-19 pandemic than previous historical samples. I hypothesize that there will be a significant relationship between social media and these variables. I hypothesize that social media usage explains the variance in levels of the fear of missing out, anxiety, and loneliness in college students. Results of this study found increased levels of the fear of missing out, anxiety, and loneliness in college students. These variables also were strongly correlated between each other and social media. Social media usage only explained 11.8% of the variance in the fear of missing out and less for loneliness and anxiety, 7.1% and 4.8% respectively (p < 0.05). Social media is contributing to the issue, but the pandemic poses a much larger issue that might be weighing more heavily on students.

Acknowledgments

Thank you Dr. Doyle for your continued support and encouragement. Thank you Dr. Howell for your gracious assistance.

IRB Number

21-011

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

5-2022

Subject

Anxiety; COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-; Fear of missing out; Loneliness; Social media

Keyword

COVID-19; fear of missing out; loneliness; anxiety; social media

Document Type

Theses

Extent

30 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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