It helps to know that our attempts to alleviate feelings of FOMO can often lead to behaviors that exacerbate it. However, understanding where the problem lies can be a great first step in overcoming it. Therefore, your sense of “normal” becomes skewed and you seem to be doing worse than your peers. You might see detailed photos of your friends enjoying fun times without you, which is something that people may not have been so readily aware of in past generations.
Research on FOMO has repeatedly shown that young people experience more FOMO than older people. Part of it might have to do with the way young people interact with technology and social media. (Recall that the term rose to prominence on social media.) It also might have to do with young people’s desire to explore and experience all that life has to offer. Older people, because they have a wider set of experiences under their belt, may be less susceptible to FOMO.
This is because, she explains, they are more likely to avoid social situations and rely more heavily on social media for connection and to decrease feelings of loneliness. First, many phones have settings you can turn on to silence messages in a variety of ways. A 2017 study correlated more daily social media use with a higher chance of having an anxiety disorder. While a 2022 study suggests depressive choose the best forex broker and anxious symptoms worsen the longer we spend on social media.
Your brain is still developing as a teen, so teens may be more vulnerable to feeling peer pressure to not miss out. FOMO could influence some teens to do something unsafe or that they wouldn’t typically do without considering the consequences. This cycle of anxious thoughts and the need to keep up could ultimately result in symptoms of depression. FOMO can happen when you don’t get invited to a party, when your co-workers go out after work without you, or when you aren’t participating in the latest trends on social media.
Life Satisfaction Rating
It’s clear that feeling a sense of belonging is important for both physical and mental health. To understand this, it’s important to know just how powerful apps like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok can be. When we see posts that make us happy on social media (or when someone “likes” our posts), it increases the hormone dopamine in the brain, lighting up the brain’s reward system, explains Dr. Dattilo. For some, this constant stream of documentation can lead to experiencing FOMO, or fear of missing out. Though FOMO isn’t a diagnosable psychological condition—at least not yet—this phenomenon can directly impact both mental and physical health.
Keep a Journal
FOMO can also lead some people to do or say things they typically wouldn’t just to appear “in the know” or get in with a “cool” crowd. Experiencing FOMO may make you feel like you aren’t as connected to the latest happenings and norms of society as you would like to be or “should” be. If you’ve ever sat at home wondering what you were missing, stared at your phone longingly waiting for a text, or struggled between choosing which event to decline on the same night, it might have been FOMO. These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘FOMO.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. “It’s the unique type of anxiety that prompts us to worry that everyone is hanging out without us — and not telling us about it while they’re doing it,” Lucia Peters writes for Bustle. While FoMO is the fear of missing out, MoMO is the mystery of missing out.
It involves a deep sense of envy—and it can take a serious toll on your self-esteem. If you feel like talking with a therapist could be helpful but don’t know where to start, check out Psych Central’s comprehensive guide to finding mental health support. If your fear of missing out has severely affected your day-to-day life and functioning, therapy may be a good option to help you regain clarity and balance. The need to stay constantly engaged, and constantly up to date, coupled with the often-filtered nature of social media can foster a negative self-comparison with the sort of distorted reality that exists online. FoMO is a complex feeling phenomenon that can be linked to several mental health outcomes. Emily Laurence is a journalist, freelance writer and certified health coach living in Raleigh, North Carolina.
- Research shows that a fear of missing out can stem from unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life and that these feelings can propel us to use social media more.
- It’s not just the sense that there might be better things that you could be doing at this moment, but it is the feeling that you are missing out on something fundamentally important that others are experiencing right now.
- FoMO refers to something tangible — seeing a post on social media and wishing you were there.
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FOMO can affect anyone, but certain people are at higher risk for FOMO if they have an underlying mental health condition or have low level of self-esteem. Of course, social media isn’t all bad, but it can be particularly harmful if your personal relationship with your body image is in disarray. And in particular, anxiety disorder and depression both lend themselves to experiencing FOMO more frequently and with longer lasting effects. In 2013, for instance, researcher Andrew Przybylski and his team at Oxford University conducted a study in which they found that nearly three quarters of young adults suffer from FOMO. In their study, they discovered that people’s fear of missing out causes them to continuously check social media and negatively compare their lives to the supposedly better lives their friends are leading. Although FOMO is strongly correlated with social media usage, it is important to remember that it is a very real and common feeling among people how to buy smooth love potion of all ages.
While social media can be a big cause of FOMO, it certainly isn’t the only culprit. The feeling of wanting how to buy sell and trade cryptocurrencies 2020 to fit in and belong far outdates the Internet. If you are experiencing FOMO regularly, there are ways to overcome it.