FOMO and its Behavioral Consequences among Women: The Mediating Role of Social Media Engagement on Impulsivity Decisions and Social Comparison

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21336580

Meghna Basu Thakur, Rhythm Mehrok, Disha Parab, Kinjal Rajpurohit, and Shraddha Jogale (Department of Psychology, R.D. National College, Mumbai, Maharashtra)

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) plays a major role in how women behave online in today’s technologically connected world. Women are exposed to more comparison-driven content which makes them more vulnerable to FOMO. To understand the psychological processes underlying impulsive behavior and online social comparison. The aim of this is research is to explore the relationship of FOMO, Social Media Engagement, Decision Making Impulsivity and the Social Online Comparison. Standardized measures were used to measure the variables, which included FOMO scale (Przybylski et al., 2013), Barratt Impulsivity Scale (Spinella, 2007), Social Media Engagement Questionnaire (Przybylski et al., 2013), and Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). The Data was collected from 213 women through an online survey and distribution of manual questionnaire. The study used convenient and snowball sampling to collect the data. Statistical analyses were calculated using R. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and mediation analysis used to study relationship between the variables. Results revealed that FOMO had a statistically significant relationship with social media engagement, decision making impulsivity and the social online comparison, while mediation effect found to not be significant. The study promotes mindful use of social media to manage FOMO and to reduce impulsive decision and excessive social comparison.