Social media connects people in a myriad of ways, yet when prevented from staying connected, an experience of missing out on information and events perceived to be integral to one's well-being may ensue. Relatedness, a core construct of self-determination theory, is a primary influencer of motivation, and therefore being cut off from others has a negative impact on one's quality of life. Across diverse groups of people, social media is utilized for a variety of purposes directly related to connectedness, which implies inherent differences in how one's fear of missing out (FoMO) manifests in everyday life. This study employed the previously validated Fear of Missing Out Scale (FoMOS) with a nonclinical sample of African American and Caucasian college students in the United States, with a particular focus on validity of the measure with an African American cohort due to a lack of empirical evidence pertaining to with this demographic. Factor analyses yielded inconsistent findings from the FoMOS initial validation study, and results indicated differences in self-reported FoMO between the two racial groups. We speculate that observed group-based differences are at least partially the result of how individuals from each group understood and internalized the conceptual meaning of FoMO, supporting a hypothesis of practical differences in how anxieties related to missing out manifest. This may be due to individual or group-based differences in motivations for, or general purpose of, using social media.

中文翻译：

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验证在美国与非裔美国人一起使用的害怕错过量表

社交媒体以多种方式将人们联系起来，但如果无法保持联系，则可能会出现错过被认为对人们的幸福不可或缺的信息和事件的体验。相关性是自决理论的核心结构，是动机的主要影响因素，因此与他人隔绝会对一个人的生活质量产生负面影响。在不同的人群中，社交媒体被用于与联系直接相关的各种目的，这意味着一个人害怕错过的内在差异（FoMO）体现在日常生活中。本研究采用了先前验证的对失踪恐惧量表 (FoMOS) 的非临床样本，其中非临床样本为美国非裔美国人和高加索大学生，由于缺乏经验，该研究特别关注非裔美国人队列的测量有效性与此人口统计有关的证据。因素分析从 FoMOS 初步验证研究中得出了不一致的结果，结果表明两个种族群体之间自我报告的 FoMO 存在差异。我们推测，观察到的基于群体的差异至少部分是每个群体的个体如何理解和内化 FoMO 的概念意义的结果，这支持了焦虑与错过相关的实际差异的假设显现。这可能是由于个人或群体在使用社交媒体的动机或一般目的方面存在差异。