Social and emotional correlates of the fear of missing out

This study compares and validates measures of the "fear of missing out" (FoMO). We administered two measures of the fear of missing out (FoMO Abel & FoMOPrzy), the Positive and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS), the Need to Belong Scale (NBS), the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ), the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II), and the Entertainment-Social subscale of the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS ES) to 286 university students to determine how well scores on each scale would correlate with scores on the two measures of FoMO. We found that scores on all but the CAS ES correlated significantly with scores on both FoMO scales. Results support construct validity for both FoMO scales, although one measure appears to provide a more specific assessment of the fear of missing out.