My Family Online: Family Visibility on Facebook

Abstract

In recent years, Facebook has become an exciting area of study that allows us to examine psychological constructs as they play out online. Facebook allows people to create online identities and manage relationships whether they are romantic, friendly, or familial. This last familial relationship is what we were interested in studying further, especially due to the lack of literature on the topic. What can one gather about an individual’s relationship with their family by looking at their Facebook page? By using measures of relationship visibility, impression management, closeness, attachment, the feeling of missing a family member, and “fear of missing out,” we were able to create a survey that would show us the associations between these constructs.