FoMO and Socio-Emotional e-Competencies as Predictors of Media Multitasking, Phubbing and Cybergossip in University Students: Transnational Differences Between Mexico and Spain by Gender

Abstract

There are clear signs of the growing use of the internet across all cultures, which generate new behaviors in the virtual environment such as media multitasking, phubbing, and cybergossip, all associated with online risks and less positive modes of socialization. FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) along with virtual emotional experiences could be relevant predictors, where literature suggests that FoMO is a trigger for problematic social media use, and socio-emotional e-competencies facilitate adaptive behaviors in virtual environments. Hence, understanding which variables predict these phenomena is crucial and whether they can be generalized across different countries. The objective of this study is to analyze whether two dimensions of socio-personal development used to interact in virtual environments, FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) and socio-emotional e-competencies (e-COM), are predictors of different cyberbehaviors (cybergossip, phubbing and media multitasking) in university students from two different countries. It also aims to verify if socio-emotional e-competencies act as a moderator of this relationship. In order to achieve this, we used a sample of 1524 university students from Mexico and Spain (19.74 years old). The results of the path analysis models show that FoMO is the strongest predictor of the three online behaviors regardless of country and gender, especially in the case of phubbing. In addition, socio-emotional e-competencies help to explain the behaviors in a differential way for each country, and the dimension of e-self-control of impulsivity plays a moderating role in FoMO in the case of phubbing and media multitasking. Some differences between countries and genders are discussed.