FOMO in College Students
The phenomenon the Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO, can be caused by many things: hearing about your friends’ vacations, listening to co-workers’ fun weekend getaway, or coming across pictures, videos, and tweets on social media sites of what your loved ones have done without you. It is hard to hear about the fun that they have had without you, especially when you were not invited. It has existed ever since people started forming relationships with others and communicating with each other. It is human nature to want to be liked and included by others. The fear of missing out can impact many people mentally, psychologically, and emotionally, but specifically, with the rise of social media, millennials are being impacted in a way that has never been seen.
Just by unlocking your phone and opening the “Social Media” folder, you have available to you all of your friends’ and families’ selfies, group pictures, proclamations of accomplishments, job offers, inside jokes, and the list goes on. When we open our devices and a web browser, all we need to do is type in “f” and “facebook.com” autofills. Social media is becoming more and more necessary in a lot of aspects of our lives now — we find our closer-knit communities there, we can communicate with literally anyone else who is also connected, and it can be a forum for support and safety information during a crisis. A lot of posts that we see can be jealousy inducing, especially if we are not aware that some event happened that most or all of our friends attended, and we might feel betrayed. This is one way FOMO can manifest itself. Demographics of internet users found by Pew Research Center say that 97% of people aged 18–29 are users of the internet, and 89% are on social media, the highest percentages of all age groups in both categories. Within this age group are college students, and in order to be connected to fellow students, family members, or even professors, college students considered the outsiders if they do not have profiles in any social media networks. In my experience, when I sit in class and look at everyone on their computers, nearly everyone’s screen is on a social media site. When I take public transportation and see people one their phones, it is almost always a social media site — particularly Facebook. The website Brandignity reported that “nearly one in every five minutes spent online is on some kind of social media network.”
I decided to create a succinct audio documentary that interviews sophomore students at Loyola University in Chicago about the Fear of Missing Out — their thoughts on it, experiences with it, understanding of it, and whether or not they think they are sufferers. The students included in the documentary have varied interests and include a business major, film and digital media major, sociology major, accounting major, theater major, and environmental studies major. Of these six students, there are four guys and two girls. They come from the Midwestern region of the United States, specifically a south suburb of Chicago, northwestern suburbs of Chicago, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Using a zoom recorder and an audio technical shotgun mic, I recorded an introduction with another interviewer about how FOMO has skyrocketed as social media has become more and more normalized and integrated in our lives. The interviewer and I provide facts to the listener, like how in 2013, the tech website Mashable reported that 56% of social media users suffer from FOMO — even 27% of users flock to social sites as soon as they wake up. The interviewer then asked the questions I created, which include: “What’s your name and what social media sites do you use?” “What is your understanding of FOMO?” “Tell me about your experience with FOMO.” “Do you check social media constantly?” “Do you use social media at least fifteen minutes before you go to sleep or within the first fifteen minutes of waking up?” “Has your FOMO increased since being in college, and how?” “Where do you find yourself suffering the most — which social media sites?” “Do you think social media makes you feel better or worse about yourself?” “Do you think social media has an impact on your self-esteem?” “What are some signs that people suffer from FOMO?” “Do you think men and women suffer from FOMO equally — how, why, or why not?” “What are some ways to stop suffering or suffer less from FOMO?”
In the audio documentary, the introduction is an excerpt from the show Parks and Recreation. The character Tom Haverford is the media mogul of the characters in the show. The context of the clip is that the coworkers go on an annual camping trip, and Tom’s boss, Ron, is urging him to turn off his phone so he has less anxiety from it. Ron tells Tom to tell him his social media diet for the day, and Tom rattles off some sites. Ron assumes he is done and believes Tom should feel better, but then he keeps listing his social media diet. This resonated with me because I also deal with having to use many social sites for various reasons. First he lists the big four: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. Then he mentions that he sometimes uses Linked-in and Reddit because of their specific uses — for “the professional shawties” and because of the “important links that you need,” respectively. In my experience being in college, I feel left out if there is a new social media site and I am not a part of it when it seems like everyone else is. This leads to using a bunch of social sites at all times. They all get different notifications and are literally ALWAYS being updated. It is hard to keep track and gives me anxiety if I am not able to get to my phone for a while.
In the audio documentary, I only included the questions with the most important and interesting answers that can tell us more about FOMO in college students today. In editing the documentary, I kept the interviewee’s introductions along with what sites they use. This is to document what social sites are being used in college in the year 2016 and to give context as to what the next answers will be about. I then kept the question and answers for “What is your understanding of FOMO?” It is interesting hearing multiple accounts of people’s thoughts. The interviewees only mentioned that it is anxiety from social media exposure, and some even singled out social media sites like Facebook and Snapchat.
The next question I included is “tell me about your experiences with FOMO.” The interviewees got a little more personal with anecdotes or examples from their lives. One person even said he switched friend groups because social media showed all the times they would hang out without him. Finally, the last question asked if they thought FOMO increased or decreased since college. The responses included a mix of increase and decrease answers — three people said it has decreased and two people said it has increased along with their explanation of their answer.
In the background of my audio documentary plays the instrumental remix of a song called “New Friend Request” by Gym Class Heroes. I included this song as the background because of its lyrics that relate to the topic of FOMO and social media: “When you ignored my request to be your friend, I spilled my guts and hit send, waited two weeks for a response and got nothing, honestly, it only made me want you more.” This line is a great example of how social media can cause you to feel weird emotions for seemingly meaningless actions like sending a friend request and it not being accepted fast enough. The chorus also mentions some FOMO-like feelings, in the lines “I ain’t got time to lose, Click approve, you’re killing me here.” When someone does not approve our request immediately or deliberately makes us wait for something we want, it makes us go crazy. We know it is such a simple button to click, so it makes us think, “Maybe she does not like me,” or “Maybe she does not want to be friends.” This is definitely anxiety-inducing; when we want someone to like us and they do not let us see how they feel, we fill in the blanks with our fears. This is just one of many songs in pop culture about social media and its effects on our emotions.
Ultimately, FOMO has existed and been affecting us our whole lives, but social media is bringing it to a whole new level. Being that college students are digital natives, they have newer perspectives and reactions to this phenomenon. Growing up with social media as our playgrounds, we have created our own set of social norms and expectations with all of these sites. It is interesting seeing how these social media sites can have mental and emotional impacts, and all it takes to discover the effects is asking a couple questions to discover the answers.
