Paris Demetriades
Inevitably, the prolonged heat of July and August will, sooner or later, force us to slow down, whether we like it or not. Yet in recent years, one familiar trap has threatened to spoil the quality of many people's summer vacations: the infamous FOMO, or fear of missing out. It is the anxiety that we are missing out on worthwhile experiences and opportunities, fueled by our constant exposure to social media. These platforms have long functioned as keyholes into other people's lives, but they have also become the world's most powerful advertising channels. That combination can have a significant effect on how we feel.
Sociological and psychological research describes FOMO as more than a personal feeling of anxious anticipation. It has evolved into an entire attention industry, carefully built to convince us that somewhere else, someone is always having a more exciting, more fulfilling, and more meaningful experience than we are.
If we step back and look at the issue objectively, though, how perfect can anyone's life really be? Aren't we all imperfect human beings, with our share of good days, ordinary days, and bad ones? Do social media platforms reflect life as it actually is, or life as we want others to believe it is? Most of us already know the answers to these rhetorical questions. Even so, consciously or unconsciously, we still fall into the FOMO trap.
This is especially true on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where people usually post only the attractive, or carefully polished, side of their lives. We see carefree days at the beach, celebrations, nights out, vacations, and countless happy moments. By contrast, feelings of sadness, anxiety, insecurity, low self-esteem, or simple boredom rarely make it online. Of course, there are times when people share those experiences as well. Still, the overwhelming majority of posts focus on happiness, or on making an otherwise ordinary and uneventful moment appear far more exciting than it really was.
It is also worth pointing out that Instagram recently introduced a low-cost premium subscription that supposedly offers an upgraded experience. In reality, the platform openly embraces even more FOMO. Features such as sharing additional personal moments with a single tap, viewing someone else's 24-hour story without appearing on the viewer list, and showing the exact minutes, or even seconds, since another user viewed your own story leave little doubt about the purpose behind Instagram Plus. Above all, it gives users an even better keyhole through which to watch one another.
Fortunately, a significant number of users seem to recognize, at least to some extent, the contradictory nature of this reality. One indication of the growing skepticism toward the FOMO industry is the sarcastic response embraced by many internet users, who openly describe their own "condition" as JOMO, or the Joy of Missing Out. It is the satisfaction that comes from accepting you cannot do everything. As a self-aware adult, you understand that fulfillment does not come from collecting as many experiences as possible. It comes from choosing the few experiences that truly matter, and those will be different for every one of us.
And because FOMO tends to peak around this time of year, when many people are away on vacation, it may be worth reminding ourselves that social media almost always presents a fragmented and often misleading picture of reality rather than an accurate reflection of other people's lives. Like most things in life, social media simply calls for balance. Sometimes it also calls for cutting back when its effect on our emotional well-being becomes clearly negative. However ordinary our daily lives may seem, or however ordinary we think they are, there are almost always reasons to feel a little gratitude.
