# FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*FOMO* (*Fear Of Missing Out*) is an acronymn used to described the need to constantly check things on online media (eg. social networking sites, but also things like emails). Go out and you see it everywhere. People waiting looking at their iphones, whether on the street at a bus stop, in a cafe, with friends or at work when there is the chance.

An article in the New York Times a couple of years ago gives the low down on it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10ping.html?_r=0

There's a number of things that this can result in. Missing out on real life things is one. Another one is worrying too much about your online life, and it interfering with your real life. Its also about a new type of social/status anxiety, like an online version of "keeping up with the Joneses." Studies have shown that this can do things like reduce amount or quality of sleep, for example.

The NYT article gives a simple solution - tune out. Its similar as solution to losing weight (watch what you eat and exercise) or getting off cigarettes (quit smoking). I would think that this is one growing problem linked to things like this, especially since Western countries are experiencing health problems such as obesity and diabetes (so too, rapidly developing countries like China).

What are your opinions about this? Do you have FOMO yourself? Do you think that online social media can be a plus, but also a minus in some ways?

All opinions on this emerging issue are welcome here!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I'm near the opposite of FOMO, by nature and intent 'unplugged' from Television (have not lived with one in my place(s) for about forty some years now.)

Reluctantly made a facebook account _because several friends had opted to use FB and the messaging there, abandoning any and all eMail, phone texts, etc._ There, I think I have about twenty contacts, near all of them people I've met online with whom a mutual liking has grown... since we are all at a far geographic remove from each other, that is convenient. I check it several times a month _or less._

The most ironic thing of FOMO is that people are busy checking up on that which they fear having missed, _virtually in place of doing anything at all._ "Can't make that appointment to go out with you to that concert; may miss an exciting and important call right then." So instead, they are at home, that FOMO having them waiting and checking all communications devices, where if they had made a date to go out to that concert, they might have had the best musical life of their lives, and also, perhaps, met the love of their life while striking up a conversation during the interval.

Conclusion? FOMO has you missing out on just about everything worth not missing.

P.s. Here is another _missing out_ dynamic I find both disturbng and fascinating as manifest on TC:

Not liking or understanding a particular genre or style, seeing very high-profile threads and comments to the contrary, and then, "Left Out" from the musical community who do enjoy that not understood genre or style, the person feeling left out goes in the aggressive negative mode on that music and those who care for it. The Sour Grapes Effect, leveled at all elements of the plant and its consumers


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