College students’ academic motivation, media engagement and fear of missing out

Highlights

• Possible links between FoMO, social media engagement, and three motivational constructs were examined.

• A new scale was designed to measure the extent to which students used social media tools in the classroom.

• The links between social media engagement and motivational factors were mediated by FoMO.

Abstract

The concerns about the consequences of mental problems related to use of social media among university students have recently raised consciousness about a relatively new phenomenon termed Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). Drawing on the self-determination theory and on the assumption that low levels of basic need satisfaction may relate to FoMO and social media engagement, the aim of the present research was to examine for the first time possible links between FoMO, social media engagement, and three motivational constructs: Intrinsic, extrinsic and amotivation for learning. Data were gathered from 296 undergraduate students by using the following scales: Social Media Engagement (SME), Fear of Missing Out (FoMOs) and Academic Motivation. The SME is a new scale, specifically designed for this study to measure the extent to which students used social media in the classroom. This scale includes three categories: Social engagement, news information engagement and commercial information engagement. Path analysis results indicated that the positive links between social media engagement and two motivational factors: Extrinsic and amotivation for learning are more likely to be mediated by FoMO. Interpretation of these results, their congruence within the context of the theoretical frameworks and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction

Students attending colleges today, known as the ‘Millennials’ (Jonas-Dwyer & Pospisil, 2004), are heavy users of social media tools relative to the general population, and use them extensively for communication with peers, including other students in their courses (Ophus and Abbitt, 2009, Subrahmanyam et al., 2008). These technologies might play a key role in keeping college students connected to family and friends to obtain social support (Gemmill & Peterson, 2006). However, extensive social media use could also negatively affect psychological outcomes, such as well-being (Alabi, 2013, Alavi et al., 2011). These concerns about the consequences of mental problems related to use of social media among university students have recently raised consciousness about a relatively new phenomenon termed Fear of Missing Out, popularly referred to as FoMO. This phenomenon has been defined as a “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, FoMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing” (Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan, & Gladwell, 2013, p. 1841).

Drawing on the self-determination theory (SDT; Deci and Ryan, 1985, Deci and Ryan, 2008), Przybylski et al. (2013) suggest that FoMO could serve as a mediator linking deficits in psychological needs to social media engagement. Their study showed that FoMO plays an essential role in the explanation of social media engagement over and above several individual factors, such as levels of need satisfaction. Based on this motivation-based perspective, the current study aims to further explore FoMO and its set of connections to Millennials’ social media engagements in higher education settings.

Motivation is considered to be a significant psychological construct in the learning process, and highly connected to academic achievement and persistence in college (Donche et al., 2014, Linnenbrink and Pintrich, 2002, Ratelle et al., 2007), therefore seems as a useful perspective for framing an empirically based understanding of FoMO. The current study aims to assess this psychological construct’s connections to college students’ social media engagement during lessons, mediated by FoMO, hence enables to delve further into the newly defined phenomenon of FoMO by investigating its correlates with learning motivations.

The current work represents a twofold effort. First, from a methodological point of view and with the dearth of empirically-based assessment instruments, a new scale, designed to measure features of social media activities in higher education settings, will be constructed and validated. Moreover, Przybylski et al.’s (2013) single-factor scale will be adapted to include different facets of FoMO, corresponding to the different social media utilities suggested by theory. Thus, in contrast to previous work, the current study could point to specific elements of FoMO and social media engagements, which may be connected to learning motivations. These efforts might allow for the examination of more components or dimensions based on theoretical considerations than have been assessed thus far.

Second, with relation to college students’ learning processes, this study could illustrate the role of motivational constructs in explaining FoMO and social media engagement, when the latter is not harnessed for pedagogical purposes. This potentially new avenue of research might encourage a future discussion related to Millennials’ engagement in current higher education learning environments, and to the investigation of new instructional approaches incorporating social media usages into current pedagogical applications.