Exploring the Intellectual Structure of “Fear of Missing Out” Scholarship: Current Status and Future Potential

Abstract

Fear of missing out (FoMO) is a psychological construct that recently emerged in the age of social media. This study aims to provide an overview of the progress on FoMO research and offer a future research agenda based on FoMO-related scientific articles published. We carried out this aim using a two-stage methodological approach, based on an initial pool of 314 peer-reviewed articles in the Scopus database: (1) co-citation analysis, a bibliometric analysis technique, with a subset of 103 articles to show how FoMO research develops intellectually; and (2) a systematic review to discuss clusters that emerged after co-citation analysis. Results of the co-citation analysis uncovered four clusters: (1) social media, (2) negative affectivity, (3) problematic social media use, and (4) problematic smartphone use. We discuss the content of each cluster in the context of central themes, key theoretical influences, and characteristic methodological approaches. We also present a future research agenda based on this discussion. In conclusion, this study provides an up-to-date overview that can assist researchers in understanding and designing future FoMO research and for practitioners to improve the well-being of society or users.