What Is FOMO?
This is a social anxiety stemmed from the belief that others might be having fun while the person experiencing the anxiety is not present. It is characterized by a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing. FOMO is also defined as a fear of regret, which may lead to concerns that one might miss an opportunity for social interaction, a novel experience or a profitable investment. It is the fear that deciding not to participate is the wrong choice.
Social networking creates many opportunities for FOMO. While it provides opportunities for social engagement, it offers an endless stream of activities in which any given person is not involved. Psychological dependence on social networks can result in anxiety and can lead to FOMO or even pathological Internet use. FOMO could result from not knowing about a conversation, missing a TV show, not attending a wedding or party, or hearing that others have discovered a new restaurant.
The fear of missing out refers to the feeling or perception that others are having more fun, living better lives, or experiencing better things than you are, and involves a deep sense of envy and affects self-esteem. FOMO is also the sense that there might be better things that you could be doing at this moment and involves a sense of helplessness that you are missing out on something big.
Brief History
The idea that we might be missing out on a good time is not new to our era. However, while it has presumably been around for centuries (you can see evidence of FOMO in ancient texts), it has only been studied since 1996. Social media has accelerated the FOMO phenomenon in several ways. It provides a situation in which we are comparing our regular life to the highlights of others' lives. Therefore, our sense of "normal" becomes skewed and we seem to be doing worse than our peers. We might see detailed photos of our friends enjoying fun times without us, which is something that people may not have been so readily aware of in past generations. Social media creates a platform for bragging; it is where things, events, and even happiness itself seems to be in competition at times. People are comparing their best, picture-perfect experiences, which may lead to wonder what we are lacking.
The roots: FOMO Comes from Unhappiness
Those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction. So when we are not feeling so great — whether we realize it or not — we turn to social media to make us feel better. Only one problem there: it actually makes us feel worse.
The Attention Deficit
The problem with FOMO is the individuals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward. When we are so tuned in to the ‘other,’ or the ‘better’ (in our mind), we lose our authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing out means we are not participating as a real person in our own world. And the key to happiness really comes down to one word - Attention. Our happiness is determined by how we allocate our attention. What we attend to this, it drives our behaviour and it determines our happiness. The scarcity of attentional resources means that we must consider how we can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If we are not as happy as we could be, then we must be misallocating our attention.
So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive. People with FOMO stop paying attention to life and turn to social media for their happiness cure.
The Social Media Illusion
We all know that Social Media doesn’t provide a very well-rounded picture of people’s lives. Often it seems like if bragging and showing off were banned, some people wouldn’t post anything at all. But despite knowing this, studies say we can’t help but compare our lives to others. If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
As Erica Jong once said: “Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.” Even if we logically know Social Media isn’t an accurate depiction of people’s lives, confronting our seeming inadequacy 24/7 against an unachievable false reality can hammer our already vulnerable self-esteem. But engaging to alleviate the discomfort also has an important secondary effect: by presenting our carefully edited version of life awesomeness, we just made anyone who sees it feel worse. We are spreading the virus.
1) Social networking sites are both a cause and an effect of FOMO, acting as a mechanism that triggers higher social networking usage. It appears that FOMO is linked to both feeling a need to engage in social media and increasing that engagement, thereby contributing to a negative, self-perpetuating cycle.
2) We may find ourselves seeking a greater connection when you are feeling depressed or anxious, and this is healthy. Feelings of loneliness or exclusion are actually our brain's way of telling us that we want to seek out greater connections with others and increase our sense of belonging.
3) FOMO can be experienced by people of all ages. Smartphone usage was related to fears of negative and even positive evaluations by others as well as linked to negative effects on mood.
4) FOMO is linked to lower life satisfaction. Fear of missing out was found to be associated with a lower sense of having one's needs met as well as a lower feeling of life satisfaction in general.
5) Aside from increased feelings of unhappiness, fear of missing out can lead to greater involvement in unhealthy behaviors. FOMO has been linked to distracted driving, which in some cases can be deadly.
Minimizing FOMO
Adjusting our attention.
Rather than focusing on what we lack, try noticing what we have. Add more positive people to our feed; hide people who tend to brag too much or who are not supportive. We can change our feed to show less of what triggers our FOMO and more of what makes us feel good about ourselves. Working on identifying what may be sapping our joy online and minimize these as we add more to our feed (and life) that makes us happy can help.
Maintaining a journal.
It is common to post on social media to keep a record of the fun things we do. However, we may find ourselves noticing a little too much about whether people are validating our experiences online. If this is the case, we may want to take some of our photos and memories offline and keep a personal journal of our best memories, either online or on paper. This can help us to shift our focus from public approval to private appreciation of the things that make our life great. This shift can sometimes help to get out of the cycle of social media and FOMO.
Looking for genuine connections.
Rather than trying to connect more with people on social media, why not arrange to meet up with someone in person? Making plans with a good friend, creating a group outing, or doing anything social that gets us out with friends can be a nice change of pace, and it can help to shake that feeling that we are missing out. Even a direct message on social media to a friend can foster a greater and more intimate connection than posting to all of our friends.
Emphasizing gratitude:
Studies show that engaging in gratitude-enhancing activities like gratitude journaling or simply telling others what we appreciate about them can lift our spirits as well as those of everyone around. This is partially because it is harder to feel as if we lack the things we need in life when we are focused on the abundance we already have. The more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic. And feeling gratitude doesn’t just make us happier. It’s correlated with an objectively better life. Gratitude, controlling for materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered, like a higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression.
Employing social media in moderation.
The negative effects of social media often occur when social media is used very frequently, or at the expense of maintaining relationships offline. Social media can be a great tool for connecting with other people. Although we can experience FOMO when we learn about fun events after-the-fact, social media can also be a great way to find out about events we are able to attend. Social media can complement a healthy, fulfilling social life when used in moderation. To reduce our social media use, try using Moment or another activity-tracking smartphone app to monitor the time we spend on social media and set realistic goals for reducing our social media time and replacing it with more fulfilling activities.
Focusing on our friends more than our acquaintances.
We can use social media to keep in touch with people who live far away and to see what our friends are doing. Viewing close friends’ posts is less likely to provoke the upward social comparison that harms our well-being than viewing acquaintances’ or strangers’ posts.
Sharing personal life updates in a thoughtful manner.
Although we know our own lives aren’t perfect, it’s often tempting to portray them that way on social media. It’s natural to want to present ourselves positively, and updating our own social media accounts can boost our self-esteem. However, occasionally discussing the less-than-perfect aspects of our lives can help others feel connected to us and give them the opportunity to support us. Honesty on social media may also help mitigate the negative consequences of social media use for others.
Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa
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