The Effect of College Students’ Boredom Proneness on Phubbing: The Chain-Mediating Effects of Fear of Missing Out and Online Vigilance

Purpose . Phubbing not only afects the impression formation and communication quality of both sides of communication but also damages the quality of peer relationships among college students, reduces the happiness of interpersonal objects, and has a negative impact on the physical and mental development of college students. Te boredom proneness of college students is an important infuencing factor of phubbing, and we aim to investigate the mechanism of its internal infuence on phubbing. Design and Methods . A short version of the boredom proneness scale, fear of missing out scale, online vigilance scale, and phubbing scale was used to survey 357 Chinese college students. Bootstrap method using SPSS Process macro developed by Hayes was used to test the chain-mediating efect of fear of missing out and online vigilance in the relationship between college students’ boredom proneness and phubbing. Results . Boredom proneness, fear of missing out, online vigilance, and phubbing were signifcantly and positively correlated with each other ( p < 0 . 05). Te test of mediated efects showed that college students’ boredom proneness not only predicted phubbing but also there were three indirect paths: the separate mediated efect of fear of missing out; the separate mediated efect of online vigilance; and the chain mediated efect of fear of missing out and online vigilance. Te efect of the three mediators accounted for 31.82% of the total efect. Practice Implications . College students’ boredom proneness can directly and positively afect phubbing and also afect phubbing through the chain-mediating efects of fear of missing out and online vigilance. Te prevention of phubbing among college students should not only reduce boredom proneness but also reduce the level of fear of missing out and online vigilance.


Introduction
With the ubiquitous utilization of Internet and mobile communication technologies around the globe, smartphones have become one of the most frequently used tools within college students' daily routines.Te powerful functions of smartphones facilitate communication and interaction from a long distance, but also sadly disrupt ofine communication in real-life settings [1].Phubbing is a kind of behavior that arises with the widespread use of smartphones, in which individuals just play with their smartphones and ignore the people or things around them in social situations [2].Studies have shown that phubbing not only damages college students' peer relationships and reduces life satisfaction [3], but meanwhile poses a negative impact on physical and mental health [4].Terefore, exploring the risking factors of phubbing among college students and how these factors afect phubbing is an issue that deserves focused attention in the community.
Boredom is a common phenomenon in college student populations [5].Boredom proneness refers to an individual's inability to experience adequate satisfaction needs in scenarios where internal and external stimuli are scarce, showing persistent attentional difculties, low arousal, and motivational deprivation [6].With the widespread popularity of the Internet and smartphones, people have more ways to fght boredom, such as mobile games, social media, and various entertainment apps.According to the research report, 91.2% of college students would play smartphone games because of boredom, and even 83.6% of college students play smartphone games during classes [7], and a large amount of college students' time is consumed in boring information in smartphone.In addition, some empirical studies have shown that in daily life, individuals with high boredom proneness tend to indulge in smartphone to debore the experience of boredom [8] and produce some deviant behaviors, such as phubbing.A qualitative study has also found that boredom is one of the predictors of phubbing [9].Terefore, this study proposes hypothesis 1: college students' boredom proneness can positively predict phubbing.
Fear of missing out is a negative complex emotional experience that is dominated by anxiety, accompanied by worry, loss, fear, and frustration about the possibility of missing out on some important information or novel events [10].It has been suggested that the fear of missing out is an external manifestation of individuals' blocked self-regulation [11] and that efective self-regulation depends on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relationship needs [12].Individuals with boredom proneness are in scenarios where internal and external stimuli are lacking and their psychological experience needs are not met; they experience impaired selfregulation, which is manifested externally as fear of missing out.Under the anxiety stimulus of the fear of missing out, individuals may look for other channels or platforms to satisfy their psychological needs, and social media provided by smartphones happen to be the most convenient way to satisfy them.Te convenient social nature of social media can build social networks for individuals to satisfy their relational needs; the anonymity of the online world facilitates individuals to express their opinions autonomously to meet their autonomy needs, and some group activities in the virtual world are more likely to make individuals feel competent [11], and the above three elements drive individuals to use smartphones as frequently and are prone to problematic social media behaviors [13], which have a negative impact on other ongoing activities and tasks, such as phubbing that occurs in ofine social situations that ignores others.Furthermore, the integration model of cognitive failure suggests that individuals with a higher boredom proneness have higher levels of ego depletion, which can cause a decline in cognitive functions such as working memory, executive, metacognitive strategies, and attention, further making it difcult for individuals to effectively allocate and maintain available cognitive resources in tasks or situational activities, leading to cognitive failure or bias (e.g., fear of missing out [14]).Tis cognitive failure or bias (e.g., fear of missing out) is in turn a susceptibility variable for smartphone addictive behaviors and may further contribute to phubbing.Empirical studies have also found that boredom proneness is an important factor to fear of missing out, which can further contribute to phubbing [15].Terefore, this study proposes hypothesis 2: boredom proneness infuences phubbing through the mediating role of fear of missing out.
Online vigilance is a form of communication that provides Internet users with a sense of "permanent contact" while leaving their real-life peers alone [16].Boredom is a typical negative emotion arising from unsatisfying psychological experiences [17], and adolescents often seek stimulation in the Internet to alleviate this negative emotion in an environment where the Internet is within their reach [18].Research studies have shown that college students are willing to use online social software to maintain uninterrupted communication with others online and to satisfy their psychological needs for stimulation when they are bored [19].Even in ofine interpersonal scenarios, they are alert to external sources online and ignore real-life interactions.Terefore, this study proposes hypothesis 3: boredom proneness infuences phubbing through the mediating role of online vigilance.
In addition, fear of missing out predicts individuals to be heavy "perpetual onlineers," i.e., it has a signifcant positive efect on online vigilance [20].Social monitoring theory suggests that individuals use their own social monitoring system to speculate on the likelihood of rejection [21], and fear of missing out is active in this monitoring process for fear of rejection by the outside world, i.e., individuals want to know whether others' behavior threatens their social relationships, and this state of desire for social support and fear of social rejection leads individuals to maintain a monitoring state of online vigilance.As we can see, boredom proneness infuences the fear of missing out, which in turn predicts online vigilance, and online vigilance causes individuals to stay "permanently connected" to online users while leaving their real peers behind.In daily life, we also see that many people feel anxious and annoyed about missing out on the exciting content on their smartphone, so they keep looking down and refreshing their smartphones regardless of the feelings of the people around them [22].Terefore, this study proposes hypothesis study 4: there may be a chainmediating role of fear of missing out and online vigilance between boredom proneness and phubbing, i.e., boredom proneness infuences college students' phubbing through the mediating role of fear of missing out and fear of missing out through the mediating role of online vigilance.

Data.
Using the whole-group sampling method, a total of 380 college students in 10 classes from four universities in Shandong Province, China, were selected as subjects.A total of 380 questionnaires were distributed and collected, and 357 valid questionnaires were obtained after eliminating invalid questionnaires.Among them, 134 were male and 223 were female; 179 were urban students and 178 were rural students; and 160 were freshmen, 103 were sophomores, and 94 were juniors.Te survey was conducted with the informed consent of the subjects and approved by the Ethics Committee of Qingdao Harbor Institute of Technology.After each survey, all participants received a small gift as compensation.[16] and has been verifed by Schneider as reliable and valid [20].Te scale includes three dimensions of salience, reactivity, and detectability, with a total of 12 items and a score range of 12-60, with higher total scores indicating a higher level of online vigilance.In this study, the Cronbach alpha coefcient of the scale was 0.91.

Pubbing Scale.
Te scale is a one-dimensional scale developed by scholar Qiu in 2020 [27] with 8 items, such as "When I am with my friends, I spend a lot of time on my smartphone" and "Sometimes, I don't even notice when my friends leave because I am looking at my smartphone," etc. Te scale scores ranged from 8 to 40, and the higher the total score, the higher the degree of phubbing of the individual.In the present study, the Cronbach alpha coefcient of the scale was 0.89.

Statistical Analysis.
Data entry was performed using SPSS 26.0 with reliability tests, common method deviation tests, descriptive statistics, and correlation analysis, and the Bootstrap method of SPSS Process macro developed by Hayes was used to test the chain-mediating efect of fear of missing out and online vigilance in the relationship between college students' boredom proneness and phubbing (Bootstrap sample size was 5000), and p < 0.05 was considered a statistically signifcant diference.

Common Method Deviation.
Because the data for this study were derived from the same measurement environment and item context, among other factors, covariation between predictor and calibration variables may result, which can confound the fndings and yield biased results.
Te Harman one-way test for common method bias was used in this study.Te results of exploratory factor analysis without pivoting showed that there were eight factors with characteristic roots greater than one and the cumulative variance explained by the frst factor was 27.54%, which was less than the critical criterion of 40%, indicating the absence of serious common method bias [28].Te bias-corrected bootstrap method was used to test the mediating efect to see if the mediating efect of each path was signifcant, and the results of the mediating efect test are presented in Figure 1 and Table 3 shows that the bootstrap 95% confdence intervals of the mediating efects of fear of missing out and online vigilance do not contain 0 and are statistically signifcant, indicating that fear of missing out and online vigilance are the mediating variables of the efect of boredom proneness on phubbing mediating variables; the total efect value (95% CI) for the mediating efect was 0.07 (0.04,0.10), accounting for 31.82% of the total efect.Te mediating efect had three pathways of indirect efects: (1) Te frst pathway was boredom proneness-fear of missing out-phubbing, with an efect value of 0.02 (95% CI: 0.01-0.04),accounting for 9% of the total efect.(2) Te second pathway was boredom proneness-online vigilancephubbing, with an efect value of 0.02 (95% CI: 0.01-0.04),accounting for 9% of the total efect.(3) Te third path was boredom proneness-fear of missing out-online vigilancephubbing, with an efect value of 0.03 (95% CI: 0.01-0.04),accounting for 13.64% of the total efect.In addition, the direct path efect of college students' boredom proneness on phubbing was signifcant, with an efect value of 0.15, accounting for 68.18% of the total efect.

Discussion
Te results of this study showed a signifcant positive correlation between college students' boredom proneness and fear of missing out, online vigilance, and phubbing, which indicates that the higher the degree of college students' boredom proneness, the higher their levels of fear of missing Perspectives in Psychiatric Care out, online vigilance, and phubbing, which is consistent with previous research fndings [9,19].Boredom proneness as a negative personality trait afects individuals' perception of environmental stimuli.Individuals with high boredom proneness have a stronger need to crave environmental stimuli [6]and are more likely to immerse themselves in stimulating behaviors that give them pleasure and satisfy their needs, e.g., being addicted to the Internet and phubbing [29].Similar studies have confrmed that college students with high boredom proneness have symptoms of frequent and excessive smartphone use [30], leading to the development of phubbing.Terefore, colleges and universities should actively focus on college students' leisure time, enrich extracurricular activities, and reduce students' boredom to reduce their phubbing.
Te present study found that boredom proneness can infuence college students' phubbing through the mediator of fear of missing out.Boredom proneness is a psychological feeling and experience of individuals that can predict fear of missing out to some extent, which is consistent with previous studies [31].Te fact that college students have more free time can exacerbate boredom leading to higher levels of fear of missing out.Individuals with a fear of missing out tend to have an attentional bias, and individuals with higher levels of fear of missing out are more worried about missing out on important information, which they alleviate through smartphone use.When the functionally diverse mobile social media satisfes individuals' psychological needs, individuals will gradually form such dependence on it and neglect to communicate with their real-life peers, resulting in the emergence of phubbing.
Tis study also found that boredom proneness can infuence phubbing through online vigilance as a mediator.Individuals with high boredom proneness will be hypervigilant to stay online in order to satisfy a certain need for psychological stimulation [16] and show high online vigilance by being hypervigilant to dynamic updates of information from the outside world on mobile social media.Strong online vigilance can prompt the need for individuals to be prepared to respond quickly to cues received from online communication, which implies interrupting other important ofine peer communication activities to exhibit phubbing.Terefore, boredom proneness infuences phubbing through online vigilance.
In addition, college students' boredom proneness can infuence phubbing through the chain-mediating efect of fear of missing out-online vigilance.As mentioned above, the higher the boredom proneness of college students, the more likely they are to develop the fear of missing out.Fear of missing out causes individuals to manifest a desire to understand the experiences of others and the real-time dynamics of what is going on in the outside world and fear of missing out on exciting information, individuals will think more frequently and deeply about their personal online    4 Perspectives in Psychiatric Care domain of online vigilance [16], and, in a state of high online vigilance, individuals actively observe and monitor their online communication environment while engaging in ofine activities [16], leading to excessive use of ofine social situations.Te phenomenon of excessive use of smartphones and leaving others alone in ofine social situations is known as phubbing.
As mentioned above, fear of missing out and online vigilance play a chain-mediating efect between college students' boredom proneness and phubbing, which has theoretical implications for how to reduce college students' phubbing.Te limitation of this study is that a cross-sectional study was used, and it was not possible to trace the data of each variable and verify its stronger causal relationship.A self-report method was used, which sufers from the subjective nature of the subjects and the results may be somewhat biased.In the future, longitudinal tracking data will be used to conduct the study by collecting data in multiple ways to compensate for these shortcomings and obtain more robust fndings.

Conclusion
College students' boredom proneness is signifcantly correlated with fear of missing out, online vigilance, and phubbing, and boredom proneness can positively predict phubbing.
Boredom proneness of college students not only directly predicted phubbing but also infuenced phubbing through the mediating efect of fear of missing out and online vigilance.Te mediating efect was generated through three paths: through the independent mediating efect of fear of missing out; through the independent mediating efect of online vigilance; and through the chain-mediating efect of fear of missing out and online vigilance.
[26]dom Proneness Scale, Short Form.Te scale was developed by foreign scholarsVodanovich et al. in 2005 [23]and domestic scholars Li et al. revised the Chinese version on the basis of this scale in 2016[24].Te scale was divided into two dimensions, external stimuli and internal stimuli, with 12 items and a score range of 12-84, with higher scores indicating a higher degree of individual boredom proneness.Its Cronbach alpha coefcient was 0.80.2.2.2.Fear of Missing Out Scale.Te scale was developed as a unidimensional scale by scholars Przybylski et al. in 2013[11]later revised as a two-dimensional scale by Wegmann et al. in 2017[25]and fnally revised as a Chinese version of the scale by scholars Xiao and Liu in 2019[26].Te scale includes two dimensions, trait misplaced fear of missing out and state fear of missing out, with a total of 11 items and a score range of 11-55, with higher scores indicating higher levels of individual fear of missing out.In the present study, the Cronbach alpha coefcient of the scale was 0.85.