‘Fear of missing out’ driving social media addiction, study suggests
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Fear of missing out, or ‘FOMO’, is among the biggest causes of social media addiction, a new study suggests.
Psychologists at Nottingham Trent University investigated the factors driving addiction to social networking sites among people in the UK.
The study investigated a range of factors relating to participants’ personalities and their social media use.
Writing in the international journal CyberPsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, the team found that about 5% of participants could be classed as being at high risk of addiction.
When looking at the collective factors driving their addictive behaviour, FOMO, irrational beliefs and poor mental health explained participants’ social media addiction almost entirely.
And when they looked at each of the factors individually, the researchers found that FOMO was the most significant contributing factor to explain the emergence of social media addiction.
FOMO relates to a feeling that friends and connections are leading more interes...
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