Nomophobia, netlessphobia, and fear of missing out in nursing students: A cross-sectional study in distance education

In the pandemic, along with distance education, nursing students' smartphone and internet usage habits have changed and their duration has been extended. However, the effect of this situation on problems that may develop due to excessive/inappropriate use of smartphones and the internet such as nomophobia, netlessphobia, fear of missing out is unknown. This study was conducted to measure nursing students' nomophobia, netlessphobia, and fear of missing out levels and identify the correlations between them.

This descriptive, correlational, and cross-sectional study was conducted on 802 students studying in 3 nursing faculties between November 2021 and February 2022. Introductory Information Form, Nomophobia Questionnaire, Fırat Netlessphobia Scale and Fear of Missing Out Scale were used to collect the data.

The nursing students used their smartphones for 5.13 ± 2.26 h on average per day and used internet from their smartphones for 4.65 ± 2.74 h. They considered themselves as partly smartphone addicts and they were active users on social media platforms such as WhatsApp (97.3 %) or Instagram (82.2 %). The students' nomophobia mean score was 2.98 ± 0.78, their netlessphobia mean score was 2.53 ± 0.87, and their fear of missing out mean score was 2.18 ± 0.80. Netlessphobia alone accounted for 44.4 % of nomophobia and there was a positive and moderate correlation between them (r = 0.666; p < .001). Fear of missing out alone accounted for 18.5 % of nomophobia and there was a positive and moderate correlation between them (r = 0.430; p < .001). Both of them affected nomophobia by 45.4 %.

Despite the increase in the digital activities of nursing students in the distance education process, it is positive that the netlessphobia and fear of missing out scores are low. However, higher nomophobia scores and strong relationships between concepts require being aware of possible problems, monitoring and taking precautions.