Lately I feel like FOMO, fear of missing out, has started to take over. The need to be constantly active, going everywhere, seeing everyone… it has never happened to me before, and I feel like it’s preventing me from having healthy social interactions and a healthy relationship with social media, especially. It’s hard to remember that I don’t constantly need to check my phone to see if my new international friends are up to something.
So I started doing some research on FOMO and I found a scientifical paper on FOMO by Mayank Gupta and Aditya Sharma titled “Fear of missing out: A brief overview of origin, theoretical underpinnings and relationship with mental health”. What makes this paper fascinating to read is that Gupta and Sharma analyze FOMO from a clinical perspective, argumenting why is it important for clinicians to understand it and how it can affect patients. I would like to talk about the most interesting facts on FOMO I discovered thanks to this paper.
What is FOMO?
As we all know, this fear of missing out is what makes us feel like not going to a certain place, not showing up to a certain event, not watching a certain media content, not talking or meeting certain people will make our life empty, because if everybody does it, it means that we are missing out on something very important that will change our life. But most of the times, we know it’s not like that.
According to Gupta and Sharma, ” FoMO includes two processes; firstly, perception of missing out, followed up with a compulsive behavior to maintain these social connections” (Abstract, by Gupta, Sharma). The second process of FOMO mentioned here is not talked about enough. Of course, we all know what FOMO does to our own mental health, but we haven’t been considering what it does to our beheaviour, which also affects others. Reading this part of the abstract, I found the second process in particular scarily relatable to what my life feels recently. I’m scared that, because of FOMO taking to much control on how I live life, I might become too attached to some people and to the social interactions that we have, purely for the sake of “not missing out”.
Probably not everyone knows (or maybe I might be the only one who just found out) that the term FOMO was first introduced in 2004, “to describe a phenomenon observed on social networking sites” (Abstract, by Gupta, Sharma). I found it interesting because this term blew up only in recent years, but it exists since much more time. Apparently, as soon as the first social media were appearing in the first years of the 2000s, people were already overwhelmed with information and things to see.
FOMO and SNS apps from a clinical and communicational perspective
Part of the paper by Gupta and Sharma focuses on how communication via SNS affects our mental health, starting the process of FOMO. “(…) time spent on social networking sites, activates the amygdala and the fear pathway”, meaning that this kind of communication affects our brain directly, starting a cyclical process of FOMO: communication on social media makes us feel lonely and disconnected, and we feel the need of online connection to feel less lonely, not knowing that it will just make it worse. It’s one of those processes that we really need to see from an above perspective to understand it and to understand how to get out of the cycle.
Studying translation and communication, I focused on how online communication lacks some fundamental elements, like non-verbal cues (gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions…). It is because of this lack, according to Gupta and Sharma, that starts this cyclical process of FOMO: we feel like we are missing out on something, and we constantly chase it, making the feeling of missing out even bigger. This is what leads us to constantly check our phones for new notifications, and it also affects our decision making process.
According to this research, FOMO is much more easy to find in people (especially adolencents) with social anxiety issues. Online communication is much easier and more accessible for them. However, this kind of communication becomes problematic because it reinforces social anxiety when it comes to face-to-face comunication.
What other things are related to FOMO?
It was interesting to learn that FOMO is not only related to social media and mental health, but also to many other things, for example, sleep. Obviously staying online affects our sleep quality, and therefore our mental health. This as well is a cyclical process.
As it may seem logical, FOMO also affects our academic performance and productivity, mainly because of its impact on our ability to focus and our attention span.
Finally, FOMO affects our physical health as well, and it is closely related to how it impacts our mental health. The amout of time spent online affects our habits and life style.
It really looks like FOMO is a sort of depression or anxiety disorder given by the unhealthy use of online communication, because many of the symptoms described by Gupta and Sharma are very similar to those of anxiety and depression.
FOMO can be treated
What was, in my opnion, the most fascinating this to learn from this paper is that FOMO has diagnostic implications, meaning that it gives cues about other mental health problems that can be diagnosed, and therefore, there are ways to treat it. Examples from the paper are the prescription of anxiolytics, or, as an alternative, “self-help technique relying on dealing with the vicious circle model of anxiety” (Treatment Options for FOMO, by Gupta, Sharma). This technique includes methods to help people dealing with digital addiction and to regulate the consequent beheaviour.
This is the main reason why Gupta and Sharma highlight how important is it to bring FOMO under clinical attention.
Bibliography:
“Fear of missing out: A brief overview of origin, theoretical underpinnings and relationship with mental health”, Mayank Gupta, Aditya Sharma https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8283615/#sec4
Thank you for your insights into FOMO. The concept is generally something almost everyone knows or has heard of, but what it actually means and its implications, etc., are not much discussed. You show a great analysis of the paper by Gupta and Sharma, which brings me to the question I would like to ask (you): Do you think that FOMO should be considered a medical condition? Similar to other mental health phenomena like depression, PTSD, OCD, etc.?