Nilufar Haseen A, Fathima Shiril E.C, and K. Navneetha
Peekay CICS Arts and Science College, Kerala
Pages:67-73
Social media is a medium that facilitates the creation, sharing of information, ideas, career
interests, and other forms of virtual communities and networks. Social media and its
usage has been widespread all over the world irrespective of age. Excessive usage of
social media is likely to cause Fear of Missing Out. Both social media usage and Fear
of Missing out harm mental health; including our emotional, psychological, and social
well-being. Several researchers and news broadcasts reveal that youth and children
of the era are more into social media exposure and also they increasingly experience
loneliness, anxiety, depression. The present study attempts to investigate the Effects
of Social Media Usage on Fear of Missing Out and Mental Health among school-going
children. The data were collected using the Social Media Usage Scale (2018) by Dr.
Savita Gupta and Liyaqat Bashir, Fear of Missing Out Scale (2013) by Przybylski,
Murayama, DeHann, and Gladwell, and the Mental Health Inventory-18 (1983) by Viet
and Ware from 212 high school and higher secondary school students from Kerala.
Correlation, regression, and t-test were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that
FOMO and Social Media Usage are negatively correlated with mental health and also
FOMO negatively predicts mental health. Social media usage and FOMO are positively
correlated. There is no significant gender difference shown. A significant difference has
also been found in mental health and social media usage between high school and
higher secondary students.
Keywords: FOMO, Mental health, Social media usage