Brandtner and Wegmann situate FoMO within the cognitive-affective dynamics of desire rather than treating it as inherently pathological. Drawing on the Elaborated Intrusion Theory of Desire, they test how desire thinking, FoMO and craving interact in problematic social networking-site use among 193 participants. Their most important conceptual result is negative in a productive sense: neither desire thinking nor FoMO becomes dysfunctional by definition; problematicity emerges through their interaction with craving and patterns of use. This reframes FoMO as a contingent process rather than a fixed deficit. Methodologically, the study uses serial mediation to specify the sequence through which verbally elaborated desire can contribute to FoMO and, under certain conditions, problematic use. The work bridges cognitive psychology, behavioural addiction research and media studies by locating platform use within loops of anticipation, imagined participation and recurrent checking. It thereby complicates moralising accounts of digital behaviour and provides a mechanism-sensitive model of how affective anticipation becomes technologically organised.
