FOMO: My Biggest Nightmare
Story time: this past summer, my family and I traveled to Italy for two weeks to take one last family vacation. We left for Italy the day after I graduated from high school, during the beginning of the graduation party season. While in Italy, I became immediately saddened, as I would see all of my friends getting together every night and not hesitating to post their experiences on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. There I was, in some of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world, and I felt anxious because I was missing out on having fun with my friends. I suffered from something nearly everyone my age experiences at one point or another: the fear of missing out (FOMO).
FOMO can be attributed to the extremely large amount of information that is posted on the Internet everyday, primarily through social media sites. To examine the prolific dispersion of content, the website http://onesecond.designly.com reliably quantified how many posts were made on a social networking site every second. I opened the webpage as soon as I began writing this post, and after having this webpage open for about ten minutes, the facts are astounding. In the ten minute period, there were 273,170 Instagram photos uploaded, 2,376,740 tweets tweeted, and 33,645,618 Facebook “likes” (http://onesecond.designly.com). Ultimately, with all this information being dispersed on social networking sites, FOMO has become extremely prevalent among people my age.
The Australian Psychological Society used a large sample group of teenagers who all use multiple social media sites to measure just how prevalent FOMO is, causing this survey to be reliable. After conducting their research, they those who checked social media five or more times a day were more susceptible to have FOMO. From there, they found that 54% of teens were worried that their friends were having a “more rewarding experience” without them. Additionally, 6 in 10 Australian teens “worry” about when their friends are having fun without them. Lastly, 63% of teens are “bothered” when they missed out on planned meetings with their friends (https://www.psychology.org.au/psychologyweek/survey/results-fomo/). These numbers support my claim that a majority of teens possess FOMO in their life. Also, the teenagers that were surveyed were ones that seemed to constantly on social media, and therefore more exposed to all of the information that is posted every day.
The website http://onesecond.designly.com in conjunction with the reliable reports from the Australian Psychological Society further support my claim that social media has the potential to negatively effect the mental health of young adults, who may compare their time in college to the pictures and other media that their friends post on social networking sites. In the end, this surplus of information and media that is shared every day can negatively affect a majority of teenagers, creating a “dystopia” that was discussed in my introductory post.
So, what did I do in Italy to prevent myself from having FOMO? I deleted my social networking applications. I posted one Instagram picture and that was it. Because of this, I can confidently say that my experience in Italy was the best time with family I have ever had. My advice? When you are feeling as if you are missing out on something fun, power off your phone and actually spend time with the people who will always care about you: your family.
Works Cited:
“Fear of Missing Out Survey Results 2015.” Australian Psychological Society, https://www.psychology.org.au/psychologyweek/survey/results-fomo/. Accessed 11 October 2016.
Lewis, Steven. “Every Second on the Internet.” http://onesecond.designly.com. Accessed 11 October 2016.