Fear of Missing Out (n)
A form of social anxiety characterized by compulsive concern that one might be missing opportunities for social interaction, novel experiences, profitable investments, or other favorable things.
When you are having your lunch in an afternoon while scrolling through your social media, your attention was stopped by a posting where you found that your class mate has just bought a new sport car. This information bother you the whole day when you are working and until your bed time. You are wondering about your mate. The feeling of insecurity might consume you and your thought. You are thinking of the opportunity that you might have missed or maybe what drives him to be this successful. The thought stay overnight.
On the other day, when you are about to let go of the insecurity that has just occur, one of your fellow was bragging about his profit on his trading on stocks that up to 30% in a day! Again, deep down you feel you have missed a chance to make money. This idea too, distract you for the whole day. Through these distractions, your work is undone. However, your boss wants that work to be finished by tomorrow morning. You got to work overtime. Your fellow was having a dinner party for the company’s anniversary. You are wondering what you might have left behind in not participating that dinner. You are thinking of the enjoyment if you are there.
If you have ever been in this kind of situation, congratulation you are not alone. This kind of feelings is experienced by everybody. A syndrome of anxiety about opportunity you have missed or other favorable things (something you probably wasn’t even thinking of until you saw it). Yes, it is Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
One of the cause of this syndrome is that overused of social media.
According to Moment, a time-tracking app with more than 4.8 million users, the average person spends nearly four hours on their phone every day. That’s one-quarter of our waking lives, and much of that time is devoted to social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Social media isn’t designed with your long-term happiness in mind. Social media is designed to capture as much of your attention as possible right now. People are getting addicted in exploring because they give no effort to consume the information and this could lead to procrastination to main task.
The FOMO feelings haunts me for days several moments ago. Yes, i do feel insecure and based on the advice i got, this is what i can conclude :
- Everybody is on their own track
We are not supposed to compare our self to others. You can do it, but it should not burden you but motivates you.
Flowers didn’t bloom at the same time
The thing that you should compare of, is you and the yesterday you. The growth you make everyday to upgrade your self, your skill set, your network , your business or any other type of improvement. It is between you and yourself. By focusing on the progress you made everyday, you can find a challenge that you made for yourself and it’s really work in level up yourself.
2. Social Media didn’t tell you everything
What you see on social media is what others want to show by their post. We have to keep in mind that social media shows us snapshots of moments in others’ lives, moments that they have chosen to share. However, you will never know the behind the scene of the story.
Social media identities can be very different from everyday life, and we need to avoid making assumptions about others and ourselves based on what we see on what may be carefully crafted profiles.
3. Avoid over using of social media.
I found this quite helping. Sometimes after we see someone in somewhere or having something showing in their social media, it can influence us that we may be need that too. But we are actually not feeling that until we saw them.
Setting spare for using social media is a good remedy. For me, i basicly will set an hour to comfort my me time in social media. Yes, and thats all. Nowadays, instagram even allows you to track your daily usage of this platform through “your activity" feature to control your personal use.
With social media distancing, i found my self doing better in doing productive things because less distraction and comparation made.
These ideas above, might be helpful in overcome the FOMO itself. Even, insecurity is things that we have to control and organize. Lastly, keep upgrading youself. See ya!
