Joy of Missing Out (JOMO): Developing a Multi-Factorial Scale for the FOMO Antithesis in Filipino Emerging Adults
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajhp.v3i1.4408Keywords:
Digital Well-Being, Emerging Adults, FOMO, Joy of Missing Out, Mental Health, Social Media UseAbstract
The social media’s recent growth has brought about a constant need for engagement which led people to Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). In line with this, a novel concept, which is the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO), has emerged. JOMO encourages people to embrace solitude, prioritize self-care, and enjoy both online and physical disconnection. Given the increasing relevance of JOMO in the modern age, this study aims to develop a scale that measures its multidimensional aspects. For the first step of the development, the study employed a quantitative research design utilizing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). An 83-item questionnaire, having a 7-point Likert scale, was constructed and distributed to 520 emerging adults (ages 18-30) residing in the province of Davao del Sur. A Shapiro-Wilk test was conducted, and results showed that the data is not normally distributed (p < 0.001). Thus, the Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) was used for factor extraction. Results revealed a five-factor structure which consists of Mindfulness (14 items), Social Media Usage (17 items), Contentment of Solitude (15 items), Social Detachment (5 items), and Social Comparison (5 items). Meanwhile, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of .974 and a significant Bartlett’s Test (p < 0.001) confirmed sampling adequacy. The final scale demonstrated a satisfactory internal consistency (α = .978). Aside from the methodological findings, results also highlighted that mindful individuals who embrace solitude often experience JOMO, while those stuck in social comparison and social media use have a hard time attaining this state. It is recommended to conduct further studies on JOMO in various settings and age groups to raise the findings’ generalizability. It is also recommended to conduct a Confirmatory Factor Analysis to fortify the results of this study.
References
Ackerman, C. (2018, June 21). Self Determination Theory and How iI Explains Motivation. https://positivepsychology.com/self-determination-theory/
Albers, S. (2023, October 3). What is JOMO? How to enjoy missing out. Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/jomo-the-joy-of-missing-out
Amirrudin, M., Nasution, K., & Supahar, S. (2020). Effect of Variability on Cronbach Alpha Reliability in Research Practice. Jurnal Matematika, Statistika Dan Komputasi, 17(2), 223–230. https://doi.org/10.20956/jmsk.v17i2.11655
Arifin, W. N. (2018). Exploratory factor analysis. https://wnarifin.github.io/lecture/mstat/Exploratory%20factor%20analysis.pdf
Arfan, M. H., Fajar, H., & Amril, S. (2024). Fomo vs. Jomo: Understanding The Psychology Behind Social Media ConsumptionBehavior And Its Impact On Mental Well-Being With A Communication PsychologyApproach. World Journal of Islamic Learning and Teaching, 1(2), 10–18. https://doi.org/10.61132/wjilt.v1i2.37
Barry, C. T., Smith, E. E., Murphy, M. B., Halter, B. M., & Briggs, J. (2023). JOMO: Joy of missing out and its association with social media use, self-perception, and mental health. Telematics and Informatics Reports, 10, 100054. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teler.2023.100054
Brereton, R. G. (2015). The Mahalanobis distance and its relationship to principal component scores. Journal of Chemometrics, 29(3), 143–145. https://doi.org/10.1002/cem.2692
Caron, P. (2018). Minimum average partial correlation and parallel analysis: The influence of oblique structures. Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, 48(7), 2110–2117. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610918.2018.1433843
Chan, S. S., Van Solt, M., Cruz, R. E., Philp, M., Bahl, S., Serin, N., Amaral, N. B., Schindler, R., Bartosiak, A., Kumar, S., & Canbulut, M. (2022). Social media and mindfulness: From the fear of missing out (FOMO) to the joy of missing out (JOMO). Journal of Consumer Affairs, 56(3), 1312–1331. https://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12476
Cleveland Clinic. (2024, September 20). What is JOMO? how to enjoy missing out. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/jomo-the-joy-of-missing-out
Crusius, J., Corcoran, K., & Mussweiler, T. (2022). Social Comparison: Theory, Research, and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781394266616.ch7.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2271-7
Del Giudice, M. (2022). The Square-Root scree plot: a simple improvement to a classic display. OpenPsych. https://doi.org/10.26775/op.2022.11.19
Eaton, P., Frank, B., Johnson, K., & Willoughby, S. (2019). Comparing exploratory factor models of the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020133. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.020133
Eitan, T., & Gazit, T. (2024). The “Here and Now” Effect: JoMO, FoMO and the Well-Being of Social Media Users. Online Information Review, 48(5), 1002–1024. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir-03-2023-0111
Fabrigar, L. R., Wegener, D. T. (2011). Exploratory factor analysis. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199734177.001.0001
Fabrigar, L. R., Wegener, D. T., MacCallum, R. C., & Strahan, E. J. (1999). Evaluating the Use of Exploratory Factor Analysis in Psychological Research. Psychological Methods, 4, 272-299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.4.3.272
Festinger, L. (1954). A Theory of Social Comparison Processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202
Finch, W. H., & French, B. F. (2018). Educational and psychological measurement. In Routledge eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315650951
Gupta, M., & Sharma, A. (2021). Fear of missing out: A brief overview of origin, theoretical underpinnings and relationship with mental health. World Journal of Clinical Cases, 9(19), 4881. https://doi.org/10.12998/wjcc.v9.i19.4881
Güvendi’r, M. A., & Özkan, Y. Ö. (2022). Item Removal Strategies conducted in Exploratory Factor Analysis: a Comparative study. International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, 9(1), 165–180. https://doi.org/10.21449/ijate.827950
Hair, J. F. (2011). Multivariate Data Analysis: An Overview. In International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science (pp. 904–907). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_395
Hoelzle, J., & Meyer, G. (2012). Exploratory Factor Analysis: Basics and Beyond. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118133880.hop202006.
Holubova, H. (2023). A comparative analysis of the principal component method and parallel analysis in working with official statistical data. Statistics in Transition New Series, 24(1), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.59170/stattrans-2023-011
Horn, J. L. (1965). A rationale and test for the number of factors in factor analysis. Psychometrika, 30(2), 179–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02289447
Jackson, J. E. (2014). Rotation of axes. Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference Online. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118445112.stat05603
Kaswa, A., & Kolapkar, R. (2024). Comparing the JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) experiences through age and gender perspectives. Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4399922/v1
King, A. P., & Eckersley, R. J. (2019). Inferential Statistics IV: choosing a hypothesis test. In Elsevier eBooks (pp. 147–171). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-08-102939-8.00016-5
Lemay, D. J., Doleck, T., & Bazelais, P. (2019). Self-determination, loneliness, fear of missing out, and academic performance. Knowledge Management & E-Learning, 11(4), 485–496. https://doi.org/10.34105/j.kmel.2019.11.025
Lloret, S., Ferreres, A., Hernández, A., & Tomás, I. (2017). The exploratory factor analysis of items: Guided analysis based on empirical data and software. Anales de Psicología, 33(2), 417–432. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.33.2.270211
McAnally, K., & Hagger, M. S. (2024). Self-Determination Theory and Workplace Outcomes: A Conceptual Review and Future Research Directions. Behav. Sci., 14(6), 428. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14060428
Onatski, A., & Wang, C. (2021). Spurious factor analysis. Econometrica, 89(2), 591–614. https://doi.org/10.3982/ecta16703
Parveiz, S., Amjad, A., & Ayub, S. (2023). Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), Social Comparison and Social Media Addiction among Young Adults. Pakistan Journal of Applied Psychology, 3, 224-235. 10.52461/pjap.v3i1.1283.
Reid, S., & Clark, C. (2025). The Psychology of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/wellbeing/fear-of-missing-out-fomo
Rigamonti, A., & Lučivjanská, K. (2022). Mean-semivariance portfolio optimization using minimum average partial. Annals of Operations Research, 334(1–3), 185–203. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-022-04736-x
Servidio, R., Soraci, P., Griffiths, M. D., Boca, S., & Demetrovics, Z. (2024). Fear of missing out and problematic social media use: A serial mediation model of social comparison and self-esteem. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 19, 100536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abrep.2024.100536
Watkins, M. W. (2018). Exploratory Factor Analysis: A Guide to Best Practice. Journal of Black Psychology, 44(3), 219–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798418771807
Xia, Y., & Zhou, X. (2024). Improving the use of parallel analysis by accounting for sampling variability of the observed correlation matrix. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 85(1), 114–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/00131644241268073
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Jelyn D. Canonigo, Angela Marie H. Mendez, Greg Adrian D. Cañamo, Gerlie Mae V. Subido, Roselle Daireen L. Guinto, Rose Ann L. Bautista, Jenelyn C. Abrenilla, Mayumi A. Castaños
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
