Fear of Missing Out Among Adolescents: Formulating Big Five Personality Traits to Smartphone Addiction

Introduction

One cannot live without the presence of smartphone. This has affected various age group, especially young adolescent. The overdependence on smartphone has led to addiction in using such device. Everyone has the desire to own smartphones, regardless of professional status, lifestyle or social level (Lin et al., 2015). Smartphone has served as an efficient tool in completing the required job and also as companionship in one's life. Several terms have been used to describe this excessive dependence on smartphone including problematic smartphone use (Wolniewicz et al. 2018; Elhai et al. 2018), compulsive smartphone use (Panda & Jain, 2018) and smartphone addiction (Gao et al., 2017). The most common term being used is smartphone addiction (Cocoradă et al. 2018). There have been many studies linking possible reasons and variables in smartphone addiction using various theories and factors. Within the vast literature of technology adoption, little has linked with personality traits among users to smartphone addiction albeit there have been studies that have tested on user's personality traits (Roberts et al. 2015; Panda & Jain, 2018; Hsiao 2017). Despite that, there are no studies linking personality traits to fear of missing out. Przybylski et al. (2013) was the first study ever to introduce fear of missing out as a determinant that correlates with human behavioural and motivational factors.

Smartphone addiction is considered as a new form of mental health (Lian 2018). A person is considered to be addictive when he or she is obsessed with a particular activity that may impact routine in one’s daily life and appeared to be dependent similar to substance-related elements (Kwon et al., 2013; Mohamed et al., 2013). Prolonged use of smartphone may lead to cognitive impairment, which is prevalent among elderly people such as forgetfulness and that can eventually result in severe physical incapability due to prolonged sedentary position (Vanoh et al., 2018). Recent studies have asserted that uncontrolled smartphone usage can lead to various detrimental impacts such as sleep deprivation, depression, loneliness and dangerous behaviours (such as using while driving (Roberts et al. 2015; Chen et al., 2017; Lee & Kim 2018). To understand this modern yet risky phenomenon, it is helpful for practitioners to connect it with personality traits, within the scope of big five personality traits that consists of extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness to experience. In a simpler elaboration, Tang et al. (2017) has noted that extroversion as being talkative, agreeableness as being sympathetic and warm, conscientiousness as being organized and prompt, neuroticism as being nervous and moody and openness as being creative and intellectually oriented.

The big five personality traits have directly been associated with smartphone usage (Cocorada et al., 2018). Personality has been integrated and included in various studies to understanding individual addictive behaviours, such as substance addiction (Zilberman et al. 2018). As for addiction in technological and internet-related medium, previous studies have linked personality to the internet (Przepiorka, 2019) and Facebook addiction (Tang et al., 2017; Atroszko et al., 2018). There is a paucity of studies focused on the user's smartphone addiction concerning their personality (Horwood & Anglim, 2018). Recent studies that studied on personality in relation with smartphone addiction include Roberts et al. (2015), Tan et al. (2018)Durak and Saritepeci (2019)Panda and Jain (2018) Cocorada et al. (2018) Hsiao 2017. These studies have included personality with various psychological motivation and barriers on smartphone and other forms of addiction, such as internet and social media.