The relationship between social media use and fear of missing out: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Social media use and fear of missing out are both common phenomena in our daily life. Numerous studies have discussed the relationship between these two variables, but the results were mixed. Theoretically, there are two main arguments about the relationship between social media use and fear of missing out. To be specific, the social cognitive theory of mass communication suggested that there was a significant positive correlation between the two variables, while the digital goldilocks hypothesis argued that there may be a U-shaped relationship instead of a significant linear correlation between the two. Empirically, the effect sizes of this relationship reported in the existing literature were far from consistent, with r values ranging from 0 to 0.75. Therefore, this meta-analysis was conducted to explore the strength and moderators of the relationship between social media use and fear of missing out. test with fear of missing out. Other moderators such as gender, age, measurement tools of fear of missing out as well as individualism index did not moderate the relation between these two constructs. The results supported the media effect model, which suggested that social media use, especially social media use addiction may be an important risk factor for individuals’ fear of missing out. Longitudinal studies are needed in the future to explore the dynamic relationship between social media use and fear of missing out.