Exploring the Effect of Emotion Awareness Intervention on Reducing FoMO

Abstract

Fear of missing out (FoMO) refers to one's perception that others live a better life as well as one's desire to keep constantly linked to what others are doing via social media. Our study aims to develop an emotion awareness intervention based on the Satir Model to help people become more aware of their emotions after using Instagram through a set of reflection questions and guiding prompts. We designed and built a web-based application called Being to deliver these content in a 10-day field study. Our findings suggested that participants generally found the reflection questions helped them better perceive how they use Instagram in terms of their use habits and mental states. The combination of reflection questions and guiding prompts helped improve participants' emotion regulation skills and enabled them to develop strategies of using less Instagram. We conclude by discussing implications for future researchers interested in developing similar interventions.