'Fear of Missing Out' among students is linked to illegal behaviour

WASHINGTON: Most people experience the fear of missing out (FoMO) on rewarding and enjoyable experiences at some point in their lives. According to a new study, the degree to which someone experiences FOMO is associated with their risk of engaging in maladaptive behaviours such as academic misconduct, drug and alcohol use, and breaking the law.

The study was published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Paul McKee of Southern Connecticut State University, USA, and colleagues.

For many students, college is a major transition that can facilitate either psychological growth or maladaptive behaviours and psychological problems. Previous studies have found an association between FoMO and disruptive/harmful social media use. A greater understanding of how FoMO influences individual behavior is important to reducing FoMO’s negative influence.

For the new study, 472 college students completed a hard copy questionnaire packet assessing FoMO levels, unethical and illegal behavior while in college, and demographic variables. The researchers analyzed this data both by using standard statistical approaches and by applying a supervised machine learning approach.

With the first analysis approach, the team discovered associations between FoMO and nearly all the behaviors they examined. Higher levels of FoMO were found to be correlated with higher rates of classroom incivility (p<0.001), plagiarism (p=0.003), greater weekly alcohol consumption (p<0.001), lower age when beginning drinking alcohol, increased use of cannabis (p=0.007), stimulants (p<0.001), depressants (p<0.001) and hallucinogens, as well as illegal activities including giving away drugs (p<0.001) and stealing (p<0.001). The machine learning algorithm found similar associations and highlighted the modifying effect of living situation, socioeconomic status and gender on several of the relationships.

The authors suggest that brief FoMO assessments, including just 10 questions, may be valuable risk prediction tools for counselors focused on assisting students in the transition to college or university.

The authors add: “Using Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) and demographic information, we were able to predict class membership (offender/user vs non-offender/non-user) of college students across multiple domains (alcohol and drug use, academic misconduct, illegal behavior) well above baseline (e.g., 50% at baseline vs 87% for academic misconduct). These results suggest that FoMO exists not just as an aversive phenomenon, but it also leads to concrete consequences for individuals and society.”