FOMO – The Fear of Missing Out
“You are missing out” is a sentence that could strike a bell of anxiety in the heart of young people and especially college students. As they step into the world of ‘adulthood’, most of them look forward to having experiences beyond their capacities and very often feel unsatisfied when they couldn’t achieve every one of them. Known as FOMO – this is a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. This term which stands for – the Fear of Missing Out was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013 as its increasing effect was observed in college students of 21st century.
Do you have trouble watching a movie without obsessively checking your phone? Does your family give you a constant reminder of your social media habits? If you panic when you have to stay without internet for a few days or lose few flowers on the social circle, you may be experiencing FOMO – a virtual filter that’s very common in college students. Snapchatting every meal of the day, updating your status every second, posting out your personal life on Instagram or gaining the highest number of followers among your friend is all that defines this phenomenon. This ‘I want that’ and ‘give me more’ attitude is a major detrimental to an individual’s physical and mental health. In college, we are surrounded by so much diversity and supposedly astonishing elements that we tend to look ‘outward’ instead of ‘inward’ and lose ourselves in the vivid daydreams.
The major reason being students experiencing FOMO is social anxiety. Those individuals who are under-confident, depressed, suffer from anxiety disorders or lack friends whom they can share their thoughts with are victimised by this. All this incessant worrying about what is happening in everyone else’s life causes us to miss out on our lives even further. So, how to fix FOMO. The answer is YOLO. Yes, the phrase ‘You only live once’ that you see printed on graphic tees is the exact kind of reframing your mind needs. Building your arsenal against these emotions is the key to breaking the negative though chain. Replace the negative thoughts with reasonable ones. Build a social life of your own that is a close circuit of your friends and connect with them. Limit your time mushed up in your phone, set personal goals, go outside and experience the reality of your adventures.
