Social media applications, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram, have become more and more

popular in recent years. Especially, younger generations use social media on a regular basis: According
to recently published representative data from Europe, 92% of adolescents and young adults use instant
messengers, and 70% use social networks at least one time per week (Koch and Frees, 2016).

Other studies found positive connections between symptoms of depression and anxiety (e.g. Labrague,
2014; Lin et al., 2016; Pantic et al., 2012), or diminished levels of life satisfaction (e.g. Kross et al., 2013),
and social media engagement (SME).

For example, the sampling strategies used in the majority of studies are suboptimal (Lin et al., 2016).
Typically relying on self-recruitment, most works are based on nonrepresentative, rather small
participant samples. Furthermore, recent systematic reviews showed that the connection between SME
and indicators of well-being is quite complex (Baker and Algorta, 2016; Frost and Rickwood, 2017).

The current study will address some of the limitations of existing works. First, the sampling issues of
many existing studies are addressed by investigating connections between well-being and SME using a
representative, large sample of the core group of social media users (1865 social media users aged 14–
39 years)

To provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind the investigated connections, the
interplay of two potential mediating factors is additionally inspected: the fear of missing out (FoMO) and
social comparison orientation (SCO).

Finally, our study investigates how FoMO and SCO are related to each other. Even though the common
definition of FoMO (as the feeling that peers are doing better than oneself; Przybylski et al., 2013) more
or less obviously links the concept to comparison processes, the interplay of FoMO and SCO has (to our
knowledge) not been empirically investigated yet. In doing so, our study does not only aim at deepening
the understanding of the underlying psychological mechanisms of SME, but also of the phenomenon of
FoMO.