In this study design we will lay out the design of a study on the relationship between gender and social media FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). The study is formulated around research question: “To what extent does gender influence the level of social media FOMO?” During this research, the variables gender and social media FOMO (or shortly, FOMO), will be computed to test the strength of relationship between both variables.
The data on gender and social media FOMO, will be derived from a dataset that has been gathered through a survey composed by a few course lectures, for their own study. The survey was distributed among Erasmus University student that follow the CM2005 course. Gender is an independent variable, and social media FOMO, is a dependent variable. Gender is a nominal variable which cannot be influenced by external factors; social media FOMO is an ordinal variable. A possible variable that mediates the relationship between gender and social media FOMO is (social) anxiety, the relevance of this variable will be explained later in this paper. We belief that women are more likely to show high levels of FOMO, which lead to the hypothesis ‘women show higher levels of social media FOMO than men’. The hypothesis is based on the notion that women, especially in their
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In its core social anxiety, is fear and anxiety for ‘the prospect of embarrassing and humiliating oneself’ (Belzer, McKee, & Liebowitz, 2005). Social anxiety is known for having negative implications, for the individual that is afflicted by this anxiety, during social interactions (Belzer et al., 2005). Anxiety can be relevant in this research as higher levels of social anxiety may lead people who experience this (in real life) to be drawn towards social media more. And when people are more reliant on their social media interaction, this possibly leads to higher levels of