'Fear of missing out' is part of

Concept

In media-and-society studies, a behavioural addiction is a pattern of compulsive engagement with an activity that shows the standard addiction components: salience (the activity dominates thought), mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict with other roles, and relapse. When the activity is online media use, this pattern is called internet addiction (also termed problematic or compulsive internet use).

'Fear of missing out' (FoMO) is defined as the pervasive apprehension that others may be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, together with a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing. In the research literature FoMO is treated as a psychological factor that is consistently associated with heavier and more compulsive use of online media.

Application

Put the two definitions side by side. FoMO describes a motive located in the individual user — the apprehension that keeps a person returning to online media — and studies of problematic internet use report it as a risk factor and predictor of that compulsive-use pattern. It is therefore discussed within the topic of internet addiction rather than as a property of the media system.

Contrast with the other concepts

• Mass communication concentration is a structural and economic property of the media industry: how far ownership and control of newspapers, broadcasters and platforms rest with a few groups.

• Media control is an institutional power relation: how owners, governments or regulators shape what the media carry, through censorship, licensing and editorial gatekeeping.

• Media fragmentation is an audience-structure trend: the break-up of a single mass audience into many small niche audiences as channels and platforms multiply.

Each of those three describes the media system from the outside, whereas FoMO describes an individual user's psychological relationship with online media. Among the four concepts offered, FoMO belongs with internet addiction.