A study on the relationship between fear of missing out and cyberloafing

Technologies such as the internet, smart phone and social media, which are increasingly used today, make users almost addicted to these channels. Such activities carried out by the employees in the workplace has brought up an important issue called cyberloafing, which can cause serious problems for organizations. There are many variables that affect the concept of cyberloafing, which can lead to material and moral damages in organizations. It is thought that one of these variables may be the fear of missing out on developments. In this research, Fear of Missing Out on developments, which is thought to lead employees to engage in cyberloafing behaviors; the effect of the Fear of Missing Out on cyberloafing, was examined together with the demographic characteristics of the employees. The field research was carried out on employees working in a public institution in Ankara; it was tested whether the demographic characteristics of the participants and the Fear of Missing Out on the developments they experienced had a significant effect on their cyberloafing, behaviors. Study findings have demonstrated that demographic characteristics such as age, gender, marital status and education level did not affect Fear of Missing Out and cyberloafing, but Fear of Missing Out was a significant predictor of both significant and insignificant cyberloafing. Keywords: Cyberloafing, Fear of missing out, FoMO, Social media