The Influence Of Fear Of Mssing Out On Social Media Addiction: The Perspective Based On Dual-process Model

With the development of the network technology,social media has become an important part of our daily life.However,continuous use of social media for a long time may cause social media addiction behavior.Social media addiction has a negative impact on the sleep quality,academic performance and life satisfaction of today’s young people.Fear of missing out(FOMO)refers to missing out on positive experiences,information,and others getting more beneficial experiences than oneself,and is manifested by the individual’s corresponding need to maintain constant contact with others.FOMO has been proved to be a direct effecting factor of individual social media addiction.Therefore,in order to alleviate the negative effects caused by social media addiction behavior on contemporary college students,further research is needed on the mechanism between FOMO and social media addiction.This study combined questionnaire and experimental methods,with college students as the object,to explore the influence of FOMO on social media addiction and its mechanism among college students.In the first study,a total of 1040 college students were investigated with the Fear of Missing Out scale,Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale and the Self-designed Demographic Scale to verify the relationship between FOMO and social media addiction.In study 2,the dot probe task paradigm and the twofactor mixed experimental design of 2(FOMO level: high group,low group)×2(detection point location type: consistent,inconsistent),to explore the effect of FOMO on the attention bias of social media-related pictures,and examines the mediating role of the attention bias of social media-related pictures in the relationship between FOMO and social media addiction.In study 3,based on study 2 and the cued GO/No go task and the two-factor mixed experimental design of 2(FOMO level: high group,low group)×2(background type: social media-related pictures,unrelated pictures),to explore the effect of FOMO on inhibitory control of social media-related pictures.The results are of this stdudy as follows:(1)The results of the study 1 showed that,the level of fear of missing out is significantly positively correlated with social media addiction.The level of college students’ FOMO has a significantly positive predictive effect on social media addiction.The higher the level of fear of missing out,the higher the level of social media addiction.(2)The results of the study 2 showed that,individuals with a high level of FOMO produced a significant attention bias to social media-related pictures.That is,the reaction time of individuals with high FOMO in the consistent condition was shorter than that in the inconsistent condition,while there was no significant difference in the reaction time of individuals with low FOMO in the two conditions.In addition,this attention bias partially mediates the relationship between FOMO and social media addiction(3)The results of the study 3 showed that,individuals with high level of FOMO were affected by the background of social media-related pictures,and their inhibitory control function of social media-related pictures is decreased,which is also an important basis of individual social media addiction.That is,when the stimuli of social media-related pictures were used as the reaction background,the failure rate of No-go target inhibition in individuals with high FOMO was significantly higher than that in the background of unrelated pictures.There was no significant difference in the inhibition failure rate of no-go targets in the low FOMO group under the two background conditions.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)There is a significantly positive correlation between FOMO and social media addiction,and FOMO can significantly positively predict social media addiction in college students.(2)Individuals with high FOMO have a significant attentional bias towards social media-related pictures,and the attentional bias plays a partial mediating role in the influence of FOMO on social media addiction.(3)In the background of social media-related images,the inhibition control function of the high FOMO group was reduced compared with the low FOMO group in the context of social media-related images,automatic processing of social mediarelated images weakened the inhibition ability of individuals with FOMO in response to social media-related cues.