Indulgent parenting, self-control, self-efficacy, and adolescents’ fear of missing out

Fear of missing out (FoMO), an emerging experience among adolescents in the current society, has received growing research attention in the past 10 years. Despite the common experience of FoMO among adolescents and its negative developmental implications, little research has examined it as a general phenomenon beyond the use of social media as well as the influence of family and parents. We aimed at addressing this gap by investigating the association between indulgent parenting and the general experience of FoMO through the cognitive processes of self-control and self-efficacy. Using a sample of 268 American adolescents (M(age) = 15.34, SD = 1.15), results from structural equation modeling revealed that indulgent parenting was negatively related to self-control and self-efficacy, which in turn were negatively associated with FoMO. The results suggested that indulgent parenting could have harmful effects on adolescents’ development of social competence through problems in cognitive abilities. Practical implications of this study were discussed.