The “dark side” of social media use is a topic of vivid discourse in academia and 
mass media. Within this discourse, various negative effects, such as social media 
fatigue, addictive or compulsive use, and social media use-related sleep problems 
have garnered attention. The Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) is a particular dark side 
of social media phenomenon that has significant implications for diverse segments 
of social media users. In the past decade, since the operationalization of FoMO, 
scholars, especially those researching social media, have made continuing progress 
in understanding FoMO’s conceptual foundations as well as the capacities in which 
FoMO can influence the well-being of social media users. Despite the growing 
scholarly interest, research on FoMO is fragmented and features significant 
knowledge gaps, such as a limited understanding of its consequences and a lack of 
focus in prior studies beyond young adults and teenagers as a respondent group. 
These gaps need to be addressed as myriad mass media reports and academic studies 
have linked social media users’ experience of FoMO with indicators of diminished 
well-being, which in turn has implications for these users’ personal and professional 
lives. 

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how FoMO, as a context-specific 
psychological trigger, predicates users’ experience of phenomena associated with 
the dark side of social media such as social media fatigue, compulsive social media 
use, and social media stalking. It further investigates the influence of such FoMOdriven 
experiences on individual users’ professional and personal lives. This 
dissertation examines FoMO within the social media environment and investigates 
theoretically grounded frameworks that illustrate the pathways through which FoMO 
may lead to negative consequences. The dissertation comprises five articles: one 
systematic literature review (Article I) and four quantitative studies (Articles II–V) 
developed based on the review findings. 

Following a systematic review of 58 empirical publications on FoMO, Article I 
provides foundational knowledge on FoMO’s known antecedents and consequences, 
indirect influencers (moderators and mediators), study contexts, conceptualization, 
and operationalization. The results are used to present an overarching framework and 
five key propositions for advancing research on FoMO. 

The findings of Articles II and III provide new insights into FoMO’s influence 
on the personal well-being of social media users. Discerning significant links 
between FoMO and the compulsive use of social media, online social comparison, 
social media stalking, and disruptions in sleep hygiene (i.e., sleep-related habits and 
routines), these articles argue that FoMO could culminate in social media users’ 
experiences of problematic sleep and social media fatigue. The findings also show 
that FoMO may have an amplification effect on the users’ dark side of social media 
experiences on these platforms, albeit through different manifestations among young 
adults and working professionals. 

Articles IV and V focus on FoMO-driven social media use in the workplace and 
the subsequent consequences. In doing so, this research empirically investigates 
employees, who are a relatively less-studied demographic in the FoMO research 
compared to young adults. The findings show that FoMO has the capacity to predict 
diminished work performance, work procrastination, phubbing (the problematic use 
of smartphones during social or workplace interactions), workplace exhaustion, and 
work incivility. Further, these articles show that individual characteristics, such as 
regulatory focus and social media envy, play an important role in users’ experiences 
of negative consequences. 

Collectively, the findings of this dissertation provide novel insights into the 
mechanisms through which FoMO can trigger the problematic use of technological 
platforms, such as social media and smartphones, and users’ engagement in activities 
that are intrinsically linked with the dark side of social media. The dissertation 
suggests that FoMO and the dark side of social media phenomena may indeed have 
a cyclical relationship wherein one may trigger another, causing a vicious loop. In 
addition to advancing the understanding of ways in which FoMO can negatively 
influence an individual’s life, the findings hint at its potential to indirectly, but 
positively, benefit individual performance in the workplace. In doing so, the 
dissertation creates new knowledge on the dual effects of FoMO. Cumulatively, the 
findings of this dissertation, particularly Article I, provide several avenues that 
scholars can pursue to further advance the frontier of knowledge on FoMO in 
particular and the dark side of social media in general.