Fear of Missing Out, Social Media Use, and Psychological Wellbeing Among University Students

Background

The concept of FoMO is relatively new in internet based communication. Some preliminary research has explored the prevalence of FoMO and its relation to social media. On one hand there are researches which point out the mediating role of FoMO between problematic use of social media and mental health. On the other hand, FoMO has been studied as a predictor of mental health and problematic use of social media. According to the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model of problematic internet use, (Brand, Wegmann, Stark, Muller, Wolfling, Robbins, and Potenza, 2019) background personal variables such as personality, and responses to background variables such as affect, coping, and cognitions can also mediate the relationship between personal variables and use of internet. FoMO has been conceptualized as a maladaptive cognition related to use of social media within the framework of I-PACE. The current research focuses on the role of FoMO in the use of social media. The need to belong is an innate human need and individuals use social media to fulfil this innate need. This is an evolving area of research particularly because the digital platforms are increasingly becoming more important. Both, PUSM and FoMO have been associated with poor mental health. An important contribution of the current research is that it investigates the role of FoMO as a driver of problematic use of social media. FoMO can help to explain the maladaptive use of social media. Thus FoMO is proposed to have direct and indirect impact on psychological wellbeing of an individual.