Short-sighted ghosts. Psychological antecedents and consequences of ghosting others within emerging adults? romantic relationships and friendships

Ghosting (i.e., terminating communication with another person on social media without expla-nation) has become an all-too-common occurrence. Prior scholarship has predominantly focused on adverse effects of being ghosted on individuals' well-being and mainly investigated the phe-nomenon within romantic relationships. By contrast, its occurrence within friendships as well as psychological predictors and effects of ghosting others over time with regard to well-being are not comprehensively understood yet. The present study aims to fill these research gaps using data from a two-wave panel survey among emerging adults between 16 and 21 years. Analyses show that ghosting romantic partners and ghosting friends are different phenomena: While commu-nication overload (i.e., the feeling of receiving more messages than one can handle) positively predicts ghosting romantic partners, ghosting friends is predicted by one's self-esteem. Most notably, ghosting others within romantic relationships did not yield any effects on well-being, whereas ghosting friends increased depressive tendencies over time, demonstrating that ghosting is not only harmful to those who are ghosted, but can also negatively impact those who ghost others.