The Psychology of your 20s - 4. The Psychology of FoMO

Episode Date: July 24, 2021

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down,

and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all?

You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor it? It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.

You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen's, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through. the same thing. Greg a lesbian. Michael Ranciani. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And welcome back to the psychology of your 20s,

the very unprofessional podcast, whereby I, your unqualified guide, talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s. and what they mean for our psychology. This week, we're discussing a pretty big buzzword in social psychology at the moment and over the past 10 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 the 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, and you're not invited, non-included, it can often be aroused by, you know, your posts you see on social media or other forms of social triggers. So it's a sense that people elsewhere are 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 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 20s, 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, it's 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 20s, perhaps it's been stronger at times.

I think in this period of life, we are often surrounded by a lot of dense and varied social groups from uni, 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 20s, they are such a socially 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 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 kind of mentioned this already, but FOMO, it's not so much a scientific 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, we have, it has kind of become a source of research, particularly it's, you know, undeniable links to social media and its ability to confront us with all the experiences we may be missing out on.

Maybe I think it's probably, I've kind of mentioned what it phomo 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 the definition that has become somewhat standard in psychological communities. So it describes FOMO as the uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that you're 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, this study concluded that nearly three quarters of young adults have experienced the phenomena.

So at least enough that they can actually recognise those nervous and anxious feelings. But I'm sure that statistic would 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 an insecurity can be so uncomfortable. I'm sure that many others who have occasionally experienced are 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 GAD. FOMO, it's accompanied by feelings of self-consciousness, of unease, and concern about feeling socially out of place. And these all overlap with a particular form of social anxiety. A really good episode by NPR's The Hidden Brain, which is a really good podcast if you are enjoying these. But this podcast that discussed this link between FOMO and social anxiety. So in 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 belongingness because of something that's happened in a situation when you're not there. This can therefore contribute to a lot of fear of 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 phomo 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 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. It's the fear of not being in that social situation and therefore it maybe involves a tendency towards hyper and excessive socialisation, 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. 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, phoma was not diagnosable in a professional sense. It also concerns a fear of not being present in social 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, you know, directly related to relationships and the social element of our psychology. But FOMA seems to be its own class of anxiety and our knees. It's important to know why it occurs from a psychological perspective before we can grasp onto 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 emerges from a pre-existing insecurity or unhappiness. Those who 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 just general mood and overall life satisfaction. It does appear that the root of FOMO is not so much about any. 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 experiences of FOMO, even if you are confronted by the idea that you are potentially missing out on an experience or something you'd like to be included in. In that way, the 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 experience of the experience of missing out may also just serve to reinforce previous negative emotions and self-perceptions, 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 loss. as they are gains. So it makes sense that 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 socialising 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 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 FOMO, 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 when we're alone or not in a group. So if our natural tendency is towards being around others

is towards being included and being in a community, because of that 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, and we receive a benefit or a gain from socialising, which in turn creates the idea of loss when we aren't socialising, 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, evil that is particularly dominant amongst those in their 20s, social media. Social media has been a large focus among 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, you know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, they've allowed people in every corner of the world to be connected 24-7. And it's a lot. 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, seen an Instagram story of people hanging out and you felt a sense of FOMO, despite, you know, you might be 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 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 name's Dr. 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 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 at seeing that on social media because it reconfirms fears and insecurities that were pre-existing. So 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 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 phomo amongst young adults between 19 and 24 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 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 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 internal feelings. However, when you do see an image or a post that indicate that you're not being included, it can only serve to hurt you more,

but it also reconfirmed that fear you are having, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 said, quite insidious, especially in socially claustrophobic environments

that sometimes dominate our 20s, like graduate programs, uni, colleges, sports teams. teams, we can see the evident links to social media usage firstly. And it's 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 intentional model is the best antidote or provides 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 well-being, and I love an attentional model of mental well-being, I think they're kind of spot on. But they often put forward the theory that our happiness, it's directly caused by how we allocate our attention. So one researcher puts it perfectly in an article. They wrote about FOMO in your 20s. 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 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 behaviour and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive. So that might seem quite broad and it can be applied to many other facets. of our lives in our early 20s. 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 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. And since social media is the most prominent point of comparison, limiting its use is actually probably pretty useful

for also minimizing feelings of FOMO. 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're around, in those situations where you have those positive feelings. Who really brings that out in you? This will create greater satisfaction in general, 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 disclaimer, 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 20-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 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, finishing that up on a bit of a sappy note there, hope you've learnt 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 phoma 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, 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 Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. Give us a follow on Instagram and, yeah, stay tuned for future episodes. Thanks again for listening in and I hope you have an incredible week. Bye.

On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down and try to make sense of how we survived it. with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s.

It was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Kier Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having him with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.

How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen's, correct?

I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Ranjini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.