Social Media and the Fear of Missing Out: Scale Development and Assessment

By Jessica Abel, C. Buff, Sarah Burr. 2016

397 citations recorded by the source corpus.

For many, viewing social media causes them to relate their own lives to what they are seeing or reading, resulting in feelings that they are somehow missing out.  It is suggested that the fear of missing out influences decision making and behavior. The current research explores the measurement of FOMO, focusing on scale development and validation. Using extant scales for inadequacy, irritability, anxiety, and self- esteem, a list of items (n=37), postulated to measure FOMO, was created. In addition to the scale items, questions to assess behavioral and demographic characteristic were included.  A pre-test of the survey instrument was conducted (n=30).  The final survey was administered electronically, resulting in a useable sample of n=202. Principal components analysis resulted in a 10 item, 3-factor solution explaining 71% of the overall variance. The three factors performed reasonably well all with Cronbach’s alpha above or near Nunnally’s suggested .70 (Nunnally, 1978). Using the newly created scale, FOMO scores were calculated for each respondent. Results suggest significant differences in social media consumption across levels of FOMO.  Results also suggest significant differences in the use of particular social media based on ones level of FOMO.  Limitations include the sample and it is suggested that future research, including confirmatory factor analysis, should be conducted.

Subfields: Literature and Literary Theory, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a01035a048518bae561a101c83eff9e904e8bce3

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The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. J. Rolle
2. Dalia Streimikiene
3. Amandeep Dhir
4. Pham Le Anh Duc
5. Rizwan Raheem Ahmed
6. Shalini Talwar

In Social Psychology

1. J. Rolle
2. David De Coninck
3. Dalia Streimikiene
4. Amandeep Dhir
5. Noor Bloemen
6. Pham Le Anh Duc
7. Rizwan Raheem Ahmed
8. Shalini Talwar

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Shalini Talwar
2. Amandeep Dhir
3. David De Coninck
4. Dalia Streimikiene
5. Jari Tapani Salo
6. Noor Bloemen
7. Puneet Kaur

Citations in the corpus

• Conformity Consumption Behavior and FoMO (2019, background): “Meanwhile, since praise from others reflects an individual’s willingness to gain commendation and favor from other people, the expectancy of gaining praise from others may reflect an individual’s desire to be constantly involved in the process of following novelties [13,15].”
• The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Antecedants for the Impulse Buying Behavior of US Citizens (2020, background): “8%) respondents had (1-5) years of working exposure, 268 (30.”
• Sharing of fake news on social media: Application of the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis (2020, positive): “Age and gender are important variables in studies on social media usage (e.g., Abel et al., 2016; Kircaburun et al., 2018).”
• Social Media and Fear of Missing Out in Adolescents: The Role of Family Characteristics (2020, background): “Because of the parental influence on adolescents’ social media use, and since a higher degree of (social) media use is accompanied by a higher degree of FoMO (Abel et al., 2016; Barry et al., 2017; Przybylski et al., 2013), we also include social media use as an intervening variable.”