There is a phrase that has quietly become part of our everyday language: FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out. We might use it lightly, we joke that we have FOMO when friends are going somewhere without us, when we see photographs of an event we didn’t attend, or when everyone seems to be talking about something that we somehow missed. But beneath the casual expression is something rather more interesting. FOMO describes a psychological experience in which we become anxious or apprehensive that other people are having rewarding experiences without us. It can create a desire to remain continually connected to what others are doing, just in case something important, exciting or meaningful is happening somewhere else.
The fear of missing out is not new, long before smartphones and social media, people still wondered what they’d missed. We have always looked sideways at one another, always comparing our lives with those around us and wondered whether someone else had a more exciting life, a better relationship, more friends, greater success or simply something we didn’t have. Human beings are naturally social creatures, and comparison has always been one of the ways we make sense of ourselves and our place within our tribe. What has changed is the scale, speed and intimacy of that comparison. Social media has created an environment in which we are exposed to hundreds or even thousands of other people’s experiences without ever leaving our homes. We can watch holidays, weddings, careers, relationships, homes, bodies, achievements, adventures and apparently perfect mornings unfold before us. We can see where people are going, what they are eating, what they are buying, who they are with and what they have achieved and because we are seeing these experiences through a screen, we can easily forget something fundamental, we are not looking at someone’s life, we are looking at a selection from someone’s life.
Yet our minds can respond as though we are witnessing the whole picture, because this is where FOMO becomes particularly interesting. Human beings naturally compare themselves with others. Social comparison is not inherently unhealthy, it can be quite useful. We look at other people to understand what is possible, to learn, to find inspiration and sometimes to recognise possibilities within ourselves that we had not previously considered. Seeing somebody achieve something can motivate us. Watching someone learn a new skill can encourage us to try something ourselves. Discovering a community of like-minded people can help us feel less alone, comparison can therefore be constructive.
The difficulty begins when comparison becomes a measure of our worth. Social media can create an almost continuous stream of what psychologists call upward social comparison. Comparing ourselves with people who appear to be doing better, achieving more, looking better or living more rewarding lives. Research has found associations between online upward social comparison and poorer psychological wellbeing, including greater anxiety and negative social emotions and lower self-esteem. However, it is important to remember that these are complex relationships rather than evidence that social media or comparison alone causes poor mental health. Perhaps the more important question is not simply why we compare ourselves, but what we are comparing ourselves against.
We may no longer compare our ordinary Tuesday with our neighbour’s ordinary Tuesday. Instead, we compare our ordinary Tuesday with someone’s holiday, someone’s new business, someone’s transformed body, someone’s relationship announcement, someone’s beautiful home, someone’s six-figure success story or someone’s apparently effortless happiness. We are comparing the backstage of our own lives with the highlight reel of somebody else’s and wonder why we feel we are falling behind. This is where FOMO becomes more than an individual psychological experience and starts to reflect something about the society we have created. Our culture has become very good at telling us what a rewarding life is supposed to look like. We should be successful. We should be healthy. We should be attractive. We should travel. We should have a fulfilling relationship and a beautiful home. We should be financially comfortable, sociable, interesting, productive and emotionally well balanced. Increasingly, we should also be able to demonstrate all of this publicly.Should’s are introjections, what some else thinks we should be doing, rather than what we truly choose. The extraordinary thing is, that we can now carry the evidence of other people’s lives around in our pockets.
Our phones have become windows into hundreds of alternative versions of life. Every time we look through that window, we are potentially being shown another possibility of who we could or should be, this can be exhilarating at times, but it can also be exhausting. If there are endless possibilities, there are also endless opportunities to feel that we have chosen the wrong one. Perhaps we should be travelling instead of working. Perhaps we should be working instead of resting. Perhaps we should be exercising instead of watching television. Perhaps we should be socialising instead of being alone. Perhaps we should be alone instead of staying in an unhealthy relationship. Perhaps we should have started that business, changed career, moved house, changed our appearance or simply be doing more. The possibilities become endless, and when every possibility visible, not choosing can begin to feel like failure.
This is one of the more subtle effects of FOMO. It is not necessarily that we want everything we see, sometimes it is the fear that everybody else is moving forward while we are standing still. We might see someone else’s life and think, “I want that.” But underneath that thought might be something much more vulnerable. What if everybody else is moving forward and I am not? What if I am wasting my life? What if everyone else has figured something out that I haven’t? What if I am not enough? What if I am missing the life I was supposed to have? These questions take us into the deeper psychological needs that can sit beneath FOMO. Our need to belong, to feel capable and to experience a sense of choice and autonomy. When those needs are not sufficiently met, the fear of missing out can become more powerful. We can begin looking outside ourselves for reassurance that we belong, that we are successful enough and that we are making the right choices, and social media offers us an almost endless supply of comparison.
The problem is that comparison rarely satisfies the underlying need for very long. There is always another person, another achievement, another destination, another body, another relationship, another milestone and another version of life. The end line keeps moving.
Instead, maybe we can view this not automatically regard FOMO as something that needs to be eliminated because the feeling itself may contain information. Imagine seeing somebody learning a new skill and feeling a pang of envy. We might immediately judge ourselves for feeling envious, or we might tell ourselves that we should be grateful for what we have, that we shouldn’t compare ourselves with other people or that we shouldn’t care about what somebody else is doing.
But what if, instead, we became curious? Maybe being curious about what is this feeling might be showing me? Perhaps we don’t actually want their life, we want their courage, there creativity. Possibly we want an adventure or a community. Perhaps we want to feel more alive or just want permission to try something new. The person on our screen may simply have become a mirror that gives us a very different way of relating to FOMO. Instead of thinking, “I am not enough because they have something I don’t,” we can ask, “What is their life awakening in me?” That small shift can create possibility rather than deficiency. Perhaps the most useful way to work with FOMO is to treat it as information rather than a verdict on our lives.
If we feel that familiar tightening in the stomach when we see someone else’s holiday, perhaps the deeper message is that we need more adventure. If somebody else’s friendship group triggers loneliness, maybe we are longing for deeper connection. If someone’s professional success makes us feel inadequate, then there is an ambition within us that wants attention. If we see somebody expressing themselves creatively and feel something stir inside us, perhaps there is a creative part of ourselves that has been neglected and sometimes we discover something entirely different. Sometimes we realise that we don’t actually want what we thought we wanted at all, we have simply absorbed the cultural message that we should want it. This distinction is important because there is a difference between desire and conditioning. Desire comes from within, conditioning often comes from outside. Social media can make the two incredibly difficult to distinguish.
We might think we want the perfect home, the successful business, the exotic holiday or the particular lifestyle we see repeatedly presented to us. But when we pause and look beneath the image, perhaps what we really want is security, freedom, belonging, recognition, creativity or a sense that our lives have meaning. The image is not necessarily the need and understanding the difference can be liberating.
There is another idea that has emerged alongside FOMO: JOMO, the Joy of Missing Out. At first, it might sound simply like the opposite of FOMO, but perhaps it offers something deeper. The joy of missing out is not about withdrawing from life or becoming disconnected from other people. It is about becoming conscious of what we are choosing not to participate in, because every yes contains a no. When we choose a quiet evening in, we are missing the party, but when we choose the party, we are missing the quiet evening. When we choose one career, we are not choosing another. When we commit to one relationship, we are closing the door on countless other possibilities. This is not a failure of life, it is the nature of being human. We cannot live every possible life, we can only live the one that unfolds through the choices we make. Perhaps wellbeing is therefore not about making sure that we experience everything but more about becoming more comfortable with the things we consciously choose to miss.
There is also another layer to consider, social media platforms are not simply passive windows through which we observe life. They are designed environments, content is selected, personalised and presented in ways that encourage our attention. The more emotionally engaging something is, the more likely we are to notice it, interact with it and continue looking. FOMO fits remarkably well within this environment because if we believe something exciting is happening somewhere else, we check. If we worry that we might have missed something, we check. If we see somebody apparently having an extraordinary experience, we keep watching. And the more we watch, the more possibilities we encounter. This is why simply telling ourselves or someone else to spend less time on social media may not always address what is really happening. If the phone is being used to soothe loneliness, reassure insecurity or create a sense of belonging, taking the phone away does not necessarily resolve the unmet need. We need to ask what the scrolling is doing for us, the invitation is not necessarily to stop looking at other people, perhaps it is to change the way we look.
The next time we experience FOMO, we could pause before reacting. We could notice the feeling and the thought that accompanies it and ask ourselves what we are telling ourselves about the person we are looking at and, more importantly, what their life appears to represent to us. Ask yourself what am I actually longing for? Not what do they have that I don’t? it will highlight what is this showing me about what matters to me? This small shift can change everything. Unfortunately, FOMO can reinforce low self-worth when we use somebody else’s life as evidence against our own. But the same feelings can become a catalyst for growth when we use it as information about our own values, needs and aspirations.
Perhaps we don’t need their life, we need more of our own. Because there is a quiet freedom in recognising that a meaningful life will always involve missing out. We will miss conversations, opportunities, parties and journeys. We will make choices that close other doors. We will look back and wonder what might have happened if we had chosen differently but that is part of being human. The goal is not to construct a life in which we never experience regret, envy or uncertainty. Life is about developing enough self-awareness to recognise when those feelings are useful messengers and when they are simply pulling us into somebody else’s definition of a good life. We can admire someone without becoming them, be inspired without feeling inadequate, celebrate somebody else’s success without interpreting it as evidence of our own failure. We can also see an opportunity without believing we have to take it, and we can choose to miss out without believing that we have missed our chance at life.
Maybe this is the deeper invitation within FOMO, to stop asking what everyone else is doing and begin asking what is meaningful to us. What do I genuinely want? What are I being drawn towards? What gives me a sense of connection, purpose and vitality? And what am I willing to let go of in order to live it? Wellbeing is not found in experiencing everything. It’s found in becoming increasingly conscious of what we choose to experience and, perhaps most importantly, why. The world will continue to offer us thousands of possible lives. Social media will continue to show us what everybody else appears to be doing. There will always be another destination, another achievement, another invitation, another opportunity and another person who seems to have something we don’t. We cannot stop the world from moving, but we can stop using everybody else’s journey as the measuring stick for our own. Because when we learn to do that, FOMO becomes something different, not a fear that tells us we are missing out, but a mirror that gently asks us what it is we are really longing for.
And perhaps that is where the opportunity lies, not in having everything, but in becoming more deeply connected to what is truly ours.
