Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) Toward ICT Use
FOMO is a notable emerging phenomenon with the development of information and communication technologies and has attracted much research attention in recent years. FOMO is conceived as a subjective perception that people compulsively worry that they may miss social interaction with friends and important information, both offline and online (Alt & Bonielnissim, 2018). Previous studies suggested that FOMO is associated with negative psychological factors such as anxiety (Dempsey et al., 2019; Dhir et al., 2018), depression (Baker et al., 2016; Elhai et al., 2016), boredom proneness (Elhai et al., 2018), and low self-esteem (Buglass et al., 2017).
Perceived FOMO motivates people to frequently use personal ICTs to meet their information needs (Buglass et al., 2017; Elhai et al., 2018; Przybylski et al., 2013). People with high FOMO can hardly reject of receiving information, even when they perceived the information overload (Hanlon, 2016). Roberts and David (2020) borrowed information foraging theory to explain the relationship between FOMO and social media use. Like animal foraging, human beings have intrinsic motivations to seek information through various channels, especially the use of ICTs (Khapre & Basha, 2012). FOMO is considered to be related to social attachment, which motivates people to use or check social media frequently (Przybylski et al., 2013, Song et al., 2017). In addition to FOMO of social contact, people also have the feeling of fearing lose when they absent from non-social activities, such as news, business information and scientific knowledge (Alt, 2015; Elhai et al., 2020a; Hanlon, 2016).