Academic Fear of Missing out for Students

Social media use is prevalent among students. It is known that social media has both positive and negative effects on one’s psychological state. Concerns about the consequences of mental health problems regarding the use of social media among university students have recently raised awareness to a relatively new phenomenon called Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). Higher education provides rich opportunities for students to make use of, either to build their career, gather expertise in a certain field or just to generally learn new things. The higher the pool of opportunities, the more it feels for some students like they have to take advantage of all of them. It can be overwhelming to figure out what opportunities you actually have time for. This desire to do everything can lead students to develop a form of social anxiety and a new form of FoMO – Academic FoMO. The aim of this study is to further the FoMO research and to find out which factors, such as academic motivation and academic activity engagement, raise or lower the levels of FoMO for students. This is done by surveying students from academic years one through four majoring in Advertising and PR in the Higher School of Economics. Furthermore, interviews are conducted with students that show the highest or the lowest levels of Academic FoMO to find out which coping practices they use to reduce stress. Anticipated results show which factors affect FoMO levels the most and may be useful in writing a coping practice guide. This study is divided into the parts of introduction, where the background and research design are described, main body with literature analysis, methods feasibility study and anticipated results and the conclusion part with references. Keywords: Academic FoMO, Fear of Missing Out, Higher Education, Academic Motivation