Examining bi-directionality between Fear of Missing Out and problematic smartphone use. A two-wave panel study among adolescents.

6533b853fe1ef96bd12ac140

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Examining bi-directionality between Fear of Missing Out and problematic smartphone use. A two-wave panel study among adolescents.

Cecilia Giordano Vittoria Franchina Gianluca Lo Coco Laura Salerno Maria Di Blasi Antonino La Tona

subject

Male Adolescent Technology research 030508 substance abuse Medicine (miscellaneous)Toxicology 03 medical and health sciences Young Adult 0302 clinical medicine Settore M-PSI/08 - Psicologia Clinica Autoregressive cross-lagged panel Humans 030212 general & internal medicine Longitudinal modeling Young adult Data collection Smartphone addiction Fear of missing out Fear Smartphone addiction Psychiatry and Mental health Clinical Psychology Cross-Sectional Studies Scale (social sciences)Fear of Missing Out Causal link Female Smartphone 0305 other medical science Psychology Construct (philosophy)Emotional regulation Internet Addiction Disorder Clinical psychology

description

Abstract Background In recent years, the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) construct has been the object of growing attention in digital technology research with previous studies finding support for the relationship between FoMO and problematic smartphone use (PSU) among adolescents and young adults. However, no previous studies clarified the causal link between FoMO and PSU using a longitudinal design. Methods An auto-regressive, cross-lagged panel design was tested by using a longitudinal dataset with two waves of data collection (T0 and T1, one year apart). Participants included two hundred and forty-two adolescents (109 males and 133 females), with a mean age of 14.16 years, who filled out the Fear of Missing Out scale (FoMOs) and the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS). Moreover, participants filled out the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), at the first time-point of data collection. Results The findings of the study show that FoMO (both FoMO-Fear and FoMO-Control subscales) and PSU are positively related at both time-points (i.e. at a cross-sectional level). However no cross-lagged associations between them were longitudinally supported. Females and older adolescents show higher FoMO-Fear at T1. Conclusions The findings of the present study suggest caution when causal links between FoMO and PSU are inferred.

year	journal	country	edition	language
2020-01-18	Addictive behaviors

10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106360 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32135397