Fear of Missing Out FOMO Social media addiction Undergraduate students University of Benin Benin City Academic performance Gender differences WhatsApp Facebook

The study assessed the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) as a precipitator of social media addiction among undergraduate students of the University of Benin. To achieve the objectives of the study, five research questions were raised to guide the study, while three hypotheses were formulated. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The population of the study includes all undergraduate students of the University of Benin, Ugbowo campus. A sample size of 120 students were selected for the study using a multi- staged sampling technique. A self-designed questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection and it was titled: Assessment of Fear of Missing Out Questionnaire (AFOMOQ). After the validity, the instrument was tested for reliability using the internal consistency reliability procedure; whereby the instrument was pilot tested in 20 participants, the data yielded a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.70 as the reliability index. The data collected were analyzed using mean score analysis for providing answers for research questions 1 and 2. The hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested using the Pearson’s r while hypothesis 3 was tested using the independent simple t-test. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings of the study revealed that the social media platforms undergraduate students are addicted to include WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat; that there is a prevalence of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) among undergraduate students of the University of Benin; that there is a positive and significant relationship between Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and academic performance of undergraduate students of the University of Benin; that there is a significant relationship between Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and social media addiction among undergraduate students of the University of Benin; that there is a significant difference in Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) between male and female undergraduate students of the University of Benin and thus indicating that Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) was higher among the female.