4. The Psychology of FoMO

This episode we discuss the fear of missing out - where FoMO comes, why it feels so shit and potential solutions to stop worrying about what you’re missing out on.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the Very Unprofessional podcast, whereby I your unqualified guide talk
through some of the big changes and transitions of our
twenties and what they mean for our psychology. This week,
we're discussing a pretty big buzzword in social psychology at

(00:26):
the moment and over the past ten years, FOMO, or
fear of missing out. So this term, it's risen pretty
steadily in popularity within the past few years, and it's
become a term I'm sure we all know pretty well
and a feeling I'm sure we've all felt before as well.
So FOMO refers to this overwhelming feeling of anxiety that
an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere

(00:50):
and you're not invited, not included. It can often be
aroused by your post you see on social media or
other forms of social triggers, so it's a sense that
people elsewhere having fun or doing things without you. Pretty
quickly we can see how this has links to social
anxiety and has a huge intersection with psychology, despite being

(01:10):
somewhat of a pop culture phrase in its current use.
But we're going to discuss some of the psychological underpinnings
of fomo, why it's so prominent in our twenties, possible remedies,
and its origins. We're also going to discuss how fomo
has been exacerbated by social media, so why social media
is so harmful for our social and emotional well being,

(01:32):
its addictive properties as well, and how fomo is part
of that equation as well as being a consequence. So
let's get into it. So fomo or the fear of
missing out, is a feeling or a state of mild anxiety.
I'm sure we've all felt at some point in our twenties.
Perhaps it's been stronger at times. I think in this

(01:53):
period of life, we are often surrounded by a lot
of dense and varied social groups for muni, college to work, sports,
and we have pretty large, extended social circles. So it
can be pretty difficult to feel comfortable in the amount
you're socializing, especially with this ability to compare to others
and whether people are doing things without you or you
are being excluded. Our twenties they are such a socially

(02:16):
fast paced and chaotic time and we do feel that
pressure to get the most out of our younger years
and have those fun bonding moments and experiences with friends
that we can hopefully look back on later in life.
This is entirely a natural feeling. Wanting to be included
and enjoy your life and be surrounded by people that
you like and feel wanted by is normal and it's

(02:38):
also pretty healthy. We like the company of others and
we enjoy being liked as well. So that's why that
feeling that you are missing out on social experiences can
be so daunting for many and create pretty intense feelings
of insecurity, anxiety, self doubt as well. So I've kind
of mentioned this already, but fomo it's not so much

(02:59):
a scientific fic term, but more of like a cultural
one at the moment. However, since we have been able
to label it, because these feelings have been around for
many people in past generations, but with this label, it
has kind of become a source of research, particularly it's
undeniable links to social media and its ability to confront

(03:19):
us with all the experiences we may be missing out on.
Maybe I think it's probably I've kind of mentioned what
it fomo is about, but it's probably good to define
what it really means to begin. So a recent study
on the subject came up with a definition that has
become somewhat standard in psychological communities. So it described fomo
as the uneasy and sometimes all consuming feeling that you're

(03:40):
missing out, that your peers are doing, in the know about,
or in possession of more or something that's better than you.
So under this framing of fomo, their study concluded that
nearly three quarters of young adults have experienced the phenomenas,
so at least enough that they can actually recognize those
nervous and anxious feelings. But I'm sure that statistic would

(04:02):
be much higher if we also assessed people in contexts
when they kept personal journals, or if they were asked
more frequently, maybe once a week or even once a month,
whether they had had an instance of fomo. Because this
feeling of social exclusion and insecurity can be so uncomfortable,
I'm sure that many others who have occasionally experienced it

(04:22):
likely suppressing the discomfort, so probably wouldn't even realize that
they have felt that unease that they're missing out. So
the fear of missing out, it's closely linked to a
mild form of social anxiety and might be more common
in those with generalized anxiety disorder so JD FOMO. It's
accompanied by feelings of self consciousness, of unease, and concern

(04:43):
about feeling socially out of place, and these all overlap
with a particular form of social anxiety. A really good
episode by MPRS The Hidden Brain, which is a really
good podcast if you are joying these p calast It
discussed this link between FOMO and social anxiety. So in

(05:03):
all their experiments they found that FOMO is a function
of a particular anxiety that something might happen in a
group experience that will shape the group history in the future,
and that means you might not be a part of
that group as much as you would like to be,
and it will undermine your group belonging. This because of
something that's happened in a situation when you're not there.
This can therefore contribute to a lot of fear of

(05:26):
future situations in which you may feel judged or isolated
because you didn't participate in that previous social event. This shows,
I think how anxiety and FOMO are directly related to
social vulnerability about current and future social settings in which
we do crave to be included and accepted. FOMO it's

(05:49):
not in the DSM. So the DSM, we've talked about
this before, it's the largest manual of all mental health disorders.
Fomo isn't in there, but social anxiety is. And although
I've mentioned how they could be linked, they are distinct
and I don't think they should be confused. For one,
FOMO concerns fear of being excluded from a social situation.

(06:10):
It's the fear of not being in that social situation
and therefore maybe involves a tendency towards hyper and excessive socialization,
whereas social anxiety is more commonly involves an avoidance of
social situations or a fear of being in a social
situation that you can't get out of. But we can
kind of see how FOMO may contribute to social anxiety.

(06:32):
So people with social anxiety, which is a diagnosable disorder,
they have an intense fear of situations where they could
be watched, judged, embarrassed, or rejected by others, and the
symptoms are so extreme that they interfere with the person's
daily routine and prevent them from taking part in ordinary activities.
In contrast, FOMO is not diagnosable in a professional sense.

(06:57):
It also concerns a fear of not being present in situations,
whereas social anxiety involves that fear that kicks in once
we're in them. So there are some tenuous links between
social anxiety and this fear of missing out. They're both
directly related to relationships and the social element of our psychology.

(07:18):
But foma seems to be its own class of anxiety
and our needs. It's important to know why it occurs
from a psychological perspective before we can grasp on to
how to minimize it. So let's dive into the possible
causes and what the literature says about this universal fear
of missing out. Firstly, many theories have hypothesized that fomo

(07:41):
emerges from a pre existing insecurity or unhappiness. Those who
we are experiencing low levels of satisfaction around fundamental needs
for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, they tend towards higher levels
of fear of missing out as to those who have
lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction. It

(08:03):
does appear that the root of fomo is not so
much about anxiety, but it's more to do with loneliness,
low self esteem, low self compassion, if you're more satisfied
with your life, not just your social relationships. Researchers have
found that you're less likely to have experience as a fomo,
even if you are confronted by the idea that you

(08:23):
are potentially missing out on an experience or something you'd
like to be included in in that way. Kind of
interpretation I have of that is that emotions associated with fomo,
they're more of a proxy for deeper dissatisfaction with one's life,
and the experiencing of the experience of missing out may
also just serve to reinforce previous negative emotions and self perceptions,

(08:46):
hence why it can be so overwhelmingly and overall a
distressing experience. Another interesting study I looked into it discussed
how humans appreciate gains versus losses as an explanation for fomo.
So research suggests that people are twice as affected by
losses as they are gains. So it makes sense that

(09:07):
our instinct is to avoid the pain of missing out
and dwell on those defeats when we do, and it
also suggests why this feeling can be stronger than the
actual gains we get when we are socializing or we
are included. This also ties into a more traditional evolutionary
perspective that kind of explains why we do feel a
loss when we aren't enjoying the company of those we'd

(09:29):
like to be around. Essentially, we're pack animals, and in
the past, our survival was intimately linked to being surrounded
by others of our species. That's why that discomfort we
feel with foma. It may have actually originated from this
deep root of fear of danger or threat, and that
we might be less equipped to deal with those threats

(09:50):
when we're alone or not in a group. So, if
our natural tendency is towards being around others as towards
being included and being in a community because of the
survival mechanism, it does explain why missing out can be
such a tremendous stress for some. So, if our brains
are hardwired towards social interaction and a sense of belonging,

(10:10):
and we receive a benefit or a gain from socializing,
which in turn creates the idea of loss when we
aren't socializing, that just creates the foundation for fomo. It's
not really your fault, it's genetics, it's biology. It's that
instinct in you to want to be included and want
to be accepted. But let's kind of introduce the next

(10:31):
evil that is particularly dominant amongst those in their twenties,
social media. Social media has been a large focus amongst
psychologists who've been investigating fomo for many obvious reasons. The
rapid growth of social media over the last decade has
established an entirely new medium for human interaction. So Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

(10:56):
They've allowed people in every corner of the world to
be connected twenty four seven, and it also allows people
to share, you know, the best and greatest moments of
their life with essentially everyone they know for public viewing. Okay,
I don't think it's just me. You know you've seen
an Instagram story of people hanging out and you felt
a sense of fomo despite you know, you might be

(11:19):
busy yourself or being around you might be around others
whose company you actually really enjoy. But if you're already
not feeling like so hot about things, or if you're
wondering if everyone else is having more fun than you,
social media is not really the antidote. So researchers are
finding that the fear of missing out is connected to

(11:39):
social media use. These feelings strongly correlate to feelings of
regret and social insignificance as well. As people consume large
amounts of social media posts, they start to compare themselves,
not only physically as we would traditionally think, but also socially.
Researcher who does a lot of work on this his

(12:01):
name's doctor Barry, and he talks a lot about FOMO
and internet use, and he explains the link between the
two pretty excellently. So we're not all equally prone to
the fear of missing out, but for those who are,
social media can exacerbate it. So if we're thinking about
some of those discussions of the origins of social media

(12:21):
or the origins of fomo, if you're already feeling insecure
or insignificant, social media is kind of like the fuel
on the pre existing fire, and it's because it allows
you to kind of observe what other people are doing
and what's going on in their lives at any time
of the day. So if there is already that concern
about missing out, then there will be distress it seeing

(12:44):
that on social media because it reconfirms fears and insecurities
that were pre existing. So kind of social media kind
of acts like a trigger. So that's the first direction
of the relationship between social media and this fear of
missing out, whereby social media, like I said, acts as
a trigger, but fear of missing out can exist independently
of social media, and it can alternatively kind of act

(13:08):
as that primary urge to check social media, so it
creates a self fueling cycle. It doesn't just work in
one direction. So in one study, FOMO amongst young adults
between nineteen and twenty four was robustly associated with social
media engagement, and a similar study run in parallel, so
I think they were like sister studies. It found that

(13:31):
fear of missing out played a key role in explaining
social media engagement over and above any other factor that
was considered. So those high in FOMO, they tended to
use Facebook more often immediately after waking up, before going
to sleep, during meals, at work, in the bathroom, all
of those kind of habits that create a dependency on

(13:53):
social media and make it more of a lifestyle rather
than just something that is an addition to your life.
So essentially, preliminary feelings of missing out it leads people
to check social media more frequently, as it can be
comforting because if you don't see people hanging out, it
kind of disproves those in those internal feelings. However, when

(14:15):
you do see an image or a post to indicate
that you're not being included, it can only serve to
hurt you more. But it also reconfirms that that fear
you are having, You know you weren't crazy, that it
was legitimate, which can also be comforting in itself. And
we all know that social media it's not a balanced
picture of people's lives. It is a cherry picked, edited,

(14:38):
perfect version. And even if we recognize that in ourselves
that we put filters on our photos, we only choose
the best images, We only post when we're out with
people and having fun. You know, we're selective. It's hard
to apply that logic evenly to others. We really just
can't help but compare, especially from a point of social

(15:01):
comparison as well. So people who use social media more
frequently have a higher probability of comparing their achievements and
their bodies and their social lives with those of others.
And that passive consumption of social media content also correlates
to a marginal increase in depression and unhappiness as well,

(15:21):
which we already know actually does predispose someone to a
fear of missing out. So it all becomes more and
more related the more you look into the direction of
the relationship between a fear of missing out and social media.
So even if we logically know that what we see
on Facebook or Instagram isn't accurate, we're still confronted with

(15:42):
a perfectly curated version of others lives, and it does
create an unachievable false social reality that can exacerbate an
already vulnerable self esteem. You just can't compete with someone's
highly edited depiction of their life, especially when you're feeling
a little bit down or anxious to begin with. So

(16:03):
how do we overcome fomo? How do we overcome this
sense that we're missing out, this sense of insidious kind
of social anxiety, because it can feel, like i say,
quite insidious, especially in socially claustrophobic environments that sometimes dominate
our twenties, like graduate programs, uni colleges, sports teams. We

(16:24):
can see the evident links to social media usage firstly
and its origins in a more general sense of inadequacy
and unhappiness, as well as the explanation that fomo is
also a variant of social anxiety. So with that in mind,
maybe an attentional model is the best antidote or provides

(16:44):
the best insight into a cure, even though it's not
a diagnosable illness. Yeah, just something to soothe those kind
of worries. So most attentional models of mental wellbeing, and
I love an attentional model of mental wellbeing. I think
that kind of spot on. But they often put forward
the theory that our happiness it's directly caused by how

(17:05):
we allocate our attention. So one researcher puts it perfectly
in an article they wrote about fomo in your twenties.
When you attend, what you attend to drives your behavior,
and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that
holds your life together. The scarcity of attentional resources means

(17:25):
that you must consider how you can make and facilitate
better decisions about what you pay attention to and in
what ways. If you're not as happy as you could be,
then you must be misallocating your attention. So changing behavior
and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from
the negative as it is about attending to the positive.

(17:47):
So that might seem quite broad, and it can be
applied to many other facets of our lives in our
early twenties, but let's think about it in the context
of this anxiety or fear of missing out. Firstly, the
more time you spend consuming social media, the more of
your attention is devoted to this cherry picked highlight reel

(18:10):
of others lives, and this will control how you formulate
your own vision of your life, especially your social life,
and it can cause you to set up unrealistic expectations
about what others are doing and how your own interactions
should compare. So focus on being present in the experience
you're in rather than what you might be missing out on.

(18:31):
And since social media is the most prominent point of comparison,
limiting its use is actually probably pretty useful for also
minimizing feelings of POMO. Secondly, place greater attention and focus
on the moments when you do feel present, when you
do feel included and you're happy, and who you are

(18:51):
around in those situations where you have those positive feelings,
who really brings that out in you? This will create
greater satisfaction In general, all, and it does also allow
you to be less concerned about what others might be
doing without you if you're surrounded by people whose company
you really value. But obviously, just a big, big disclaimer,

(19:12):
I'm not a professional. I'm just an amateur kind of
applying my own interpretation of some of these psychological theories.
But I think this fear of missing out is universal
amongst twenty something year olds, which is kind of ironic,
you know, considering we're all feeling the same way about
the situations we're in, and we're currently envious of someone

(19:32):
else who might be envious of us. So maybe that's
where the greatest piece kind of comes from. If you
are around people you enjoy and you're grateful for, it
will become harder for those feelings of missing out to
come up. And if you realize that others also have
those feelings, kind of puts things in perspective that no
one is having any more fun than anyone else anyhow.

(19:55):
Finishing that up on a bit of a sappy note there,
hope you've learned something and could relate to some of
the experiences that we've discussed in this slightly shorter episode.
It was actually super fun to look into this, especially
having experienced this quite often in my first year of UNI.
So it's nice actually to look back and realize I'm
not in that place anymore, and those feelings of fomo

(20:18):
for me have kind of lessened since I've gotten such
better friends and valued my social interactions by their quality
rather than their quantity. But thanks for tuning in. Next week,
we have a lovely, lovely guest on the show for
our second Let's Get Friendly episode, and after that we're
going to be talking about the psychological concept of flow,

(20:39):
which is one I'm really really looking forward to, so
I'm excited. I hope you guys are as well. Remember
to subscribe to us on Spotify or Apple podcast, wherever
you get your podcast, give us a follow on Instagram,
and yeah, stay tuned for future episodes. Thanks again for
listening in and IP you have an incredible wake by