THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND FEAR OF MISSING OUT AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS

The remarkable increase in the usage of social media among college students has caused some psychological issues in recent years. One of them is fear of missing out which can be described as one’s compulsive concern in relation with missing a trendy experience or opportunity for social interaction in social media sites. Innate psychological needs such as competence, relatedness and autonomy are the basic factors that one should satisfy in order to function properly in a social environment and in a state of well-being. The lack of fulfillment of these needs may gravitate increasing use of social media and, therefore to cause fear of missing out. There have been some studies about the media engagement and motivation of the students about the fear of missing out which is often brought out by researchers as well as educators. The purpose of the study is to investigate the fear of missing out (FoMO) in college students through use of and craving in social media environments as a measure of chronic deficits in psychological needs satisfaction. College students’ frequently participated social media applications are examined with a FoMO questionnaire constructed by the researchers. The research design of the study is basically descriptive with a side purpose of validating a standard measure to diagnose FoMO.
Participants of the study consist of 1000 college students at a state University in Northeastern Turkey. The instrument of the study is a questionnaire with 25 likert-scale items constructed by researchers in the study. In the next process, data will be collected from the sample using the instrument. Data analysis will be carried out by using confirmatory factor analysis and SEM for validation, and using z-score and cluster analysis for determining the participant groups that have significantly differ in FoMO scores. Findings and practical implications will be interpreted and discussed.