5 Ways to Fight FOMO
Social media makes us feel connected and neglected. Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen offers five ways to conquer FOMO (aka the fear of missing out).
Ellen Hendriksen, PhD
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5 Ways to Fight FOMO
Fear of missing out isn’t new. A generation ago, it was called “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”
But today, social media brings us up close and personal with all of our friends’ metaphorical grass. We’re privy to pictures of their vacation in the Bahamas, the artisanal Charcuterie they ordered at that hot new bistro, and last weekend’s homebrew tasting party.
Enter FOMO—fear of missing out, which, in a first-of-its-kind study on FOMO from 2013, is defined as “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.”
FOMO comes in different flavors. To find yours, ask yourself, “If I did miss out, what would that mean about me?” Here are three of the most common answers:
FOMO Flavor #1: “I made the wrong decision.” FOMO causes anxiety by undermining confidence in your life decisions. The decisions might be as small as what restaurant you last tried, or as big as what career or lifestyle you’ve chosen. This type of FOMO feeds the unanswerable, anxiety-provoking questions of “if only” and “what if?” Indeed, that 2013 study showed that those who experience higher levels of FOMO also reported lower levels of overall life satisfaction.
FOMO Flavor #2: “Other people are having a better time than me.” This is essentially envy, which is a mix of inferiority and resentment. This type is closest to what the term implies: that you’ve been left out, either unthinkingly or deliberately by others, or because you weren’t in the know, didn’t have access, or couldn’t muster the guts to go.
FOMO Flavor #3: “I suck.” Or, for the extended version, “Because I wasn’t invited, didn’t know about it, couldn’t make it, etc. I suck.” You get the idea. This is essentially insecurity. Remember that everyone feels this way at least occasionally. When you get hit with waves of insecurity, you are not alone. That said, the researchers found that if individual’s “psychological needs were deprived,” they were more likely to seek out social media and experience FOMO. What psychological needs did they mean? Specifically, there were three: feeling competent, making meaningful choices, and feeling connected to others. The absence of any or all of those laid fertile ground for FOMO.
What’s the cost of FOMO, besides feeling anxious, envious, and insecure? Well, in addition to the exhaustion of constantly comparing your experiences to others’ experiences, the result of FOMO is actually missing out. Hear me out on this one. Pretend you’re at a restaurant with friends, or home having a perfectly relaxing evening, but when you check your alerts and updates to find a party you’re not at, your mind stops enjoying and starts comparing. The result? We neglect the present. We end up discounting and being distracted from the most important social experience of the moment: the one we’re actually in.
OK, so what to do? How to turn FOMO into focus? Here are five tips to try.
Tip #1: Don’t compare their high points to your everyday. Remember people put their best foot forward on social media. We tend to post when things are going well—vacations, accomplishments, kids doing cute things, photos in which we look particularly cute. No one posts cleaning the litter box, having the flu, or picking up tampons on sale. Everyone does these things just as often as you—it’s just that those moments aren’t on display.
If life was all peak experiences, they wouldn’t be special anymore.
Tip #2: Challenge the thought that you should love what you’re doing 100% of the time. Just like every job involves the equivalent of making photocopies, every life involves a daily grind. FOMO makes you think you should be doing something awesome—if not constantly, then at least the majority of the time. But peak experiences are called “peak” because they’re at the top of the heap and rare. If life was all peak experiences, they wouldn’t be special anymore.
Tip #3: Accept that you will always be missing something. The study showed that young people, and young men in particular, struggled with higher levels of FOMO. But with age and experience comes the knowledge that, at any given moment, there are infinite things you could be doing. There is always more fun to be had. There is also always more work to do. But until we can clone ourselves Dolly the Sheep-style, we can only pick one thing at a time. I’ll let you decide if you want to love the one you’re with, but you can fight FOMO by loving what you’re doing.
Tip #4: Beware of FOMO being used against you. Fear of missing out isn’t just limited to social media. Once you decide to look, you can find advertisers trying to manipulate you with FOMO. For instance, keep an eye out for countdown timers with online shopping, promos that offer “exclusive access,” or ads that simply promise you won’t miss out.
Tip #5: Differentiate interruption from connection. Social media is, of course, a way to stay socially connected. But when we try to stay “connected” by suspending the activity we’re actually doing and ignoring the people we’re actually with, it morphs into interruption. Our brains aren’t wired for multitasking, so when we toggle back and forth between the present moment and status updates, we end up with a series of skips and interruptions—again, actually missing out.
Do you have FOMO? Weigh in on the Savvy Psychologist Facebook page.
About the Author
Dr. Ellen Hendriksen was the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast from 2014 to 2019. She is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and many other media outlets. Her debut book, HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, was published in March 2018.