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Wentao Shan

Instructor Andreea Corona

Linguistics 3C – 3:00 PM

10/23/2022

How “FoMO” Affect Modern people’s life

There is a kind of fear that many people have together, it takes up a lot of their time,

leads them to build up undesirable or outlandish habits, and usually makes them feel angst. The

fear I have just described is called the fear of missing out, or FoMO, which can be described as

the phenomenon of feeling anxiety when thinking about others having a more interesting life.

This is a common fear that is observed in modern people and is mainly caused by the

development of the internet and social media. FoMO leads individuals to waste too much time

and gain many anxieties, which hinders the individual’s development and may further have

negative effects on society.

Firstly, FoMO wastes too much time for people. In the article, “How FOMO Impacts Our

Mental Health?” Dr. Hira Tanveer argues that "in a way, FOMO enhances social media

addiction." According to The Conversation, FoMO usually relates to the causes of some

behavioral addictions. To be more specific, in order to avoid feeling that they are missing

“meaningful” time, catching up on all the information that appears on social media on time is

required. This may seem inexplicable to the people who do not have this kind of fear, but

imagine that those information is all as important as the messages that come from bosses or
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leaders, which must be replied to as soon as possible, for the people with FoMO. As a result,

people spend tons of time keeping track of the sharing from others, which is actually

meaningless for improving their own life. Moreover, as the addiction to this kind of behavior

increases, people even do not care about the actual meaning of using social media to go

through the sharing of life from others, it seems like they reply to these sharing more and more

zealously, but actually they just mechanically give like and reply to others’ sharing so that they

prove that they are not missing out, they feel satisfaction from doing these instead of spending

time on building their more colorful life. In this way, they spend most of their individual time

and even work time on these activities. For example, in Chinese middle high schools, the

prevalence of sharing life on WeChat leads students to keep paying attention to WeChat. At

first, students may just want to keep connecting with those classmates they are unfamiliar with

by giving like to their sharing and having a mini chat when replying to these sharing. However,

as time passes by, they will gradually addict to these activities on social media, since they will

believe that their friends begin to take the reply from them as necessary, if they do not reply to

their friends’ sharing on time, their friends might think that they do not care about them

anymore. In this way, students lose their autonomy in replying to others on social media, they

could not refuse the enthusiasm from their friends, and they will also indulge in getting replies

from their friends immediately. As a result, students will spend more than 4 hours on social

media every day in their life, which causes they have not enough time to keep fitting in every

day, as well as their homework. In conclusion, FoMO always pushes people to spend a lot of

time on social media, which is a waste of time. 

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A terrifying fact is, FoMO not only wastes people’s time, but also causes angst at the

same time, which may further cause depressive disorder and autism. FoMO appears when

people fail to catch up with all the messages on social media, this can be deeper separated into

different kinds of fear, which causes a lot of angst (The Conservation). To be more specific,

when people notice that they have missed some messages from others, they may be afraid of

being excluded from their friends because of the lack of discussions or missing the chance to

get popularity, that is when others need comfort or encouragement, or just missing some

important information. However, people cannot make sure to always keep up with all the

messages, so anxiety becomes frequent. For instance, when people find that they have missed

a message from their friend, but others have replied to this message, they may begin to think

that if they reply to this message on time, they may seem to pay close attention to their friends,

so others may be more likely to make friends with them, so they missed a chance to become

more popular. They may also feel afraid of being kicked out of the circle of their friend because

of their indifference, though this is not deliberate. This kind of thought cannot be suppressed

easily by people with FoMO. They will magnify and even imagine the bad results of missing out

on the message. As a result, they always feel regretful and anxious because of every missing

message, which will make them be vulnerable. In this way, continual anxiety will lead them to

doubt if they are important to their friends, if their friends still take them as friends, and finally

doubt if their existence has meaning. When this happens, people probably have had depressive

disorder or autism, which is terrifying and hurtful to individuals. All in all, FoMO will create a

strong mental burden, which causes mental health problems.

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Finally, with the strong negative influence on individuals, FoMO may further trigger

social retrogress by negatively impacting teenagers’ life and even making the whole society

more utilitarian, which means people begin to “build habits” for sharing with others instead of

improving themselves or just love to do it. In the article, “How FOMO Impacts Our Mental

Health?” Hira Tanveer argues, "FOMO negatively impacts academic performance and the

motivation to do better." To be more specific, teenagers that have FoMO will be so afraid of

missing out that they pay less attention to their own life, which may cause them to blindly

follow or imitate others’ life. For example, when people keep looking at others’ sharing of life,

they may start to think that if they do the same things as they do, they may seem more

appropriate to them. Everyone has their own specialness, which is the most important part of

society. Only more people find their specialness and develop them well, society can develop

more rapidly. In order to reach this goal, teenagers must build their own life with effort and

enjoyment. As a result, teenagers definitely lose the chance to develop their abilities and have

less distribution to society with the effect of FoMO. Moreover, the FoMO also causes people to

share their life in order to act the same as others, they may travel and take pictures, or do some

risky and excellent activities, but they are doing these for others instead of themselves. In this

way, people become utilitarian, which causes the whole society to have the prevalence of

utilitarianism. In a word, FoMO will cause social problems since people pay less and less

attention to their own life.

In conclusion, FoMO brings many negative effects on individuals and society. In this way,

the FoMO has to be modulated. To do so, I strongly recommend that we should cut down the

time we spend on electronics in our free time, no matter how other people share their life on
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social media, try to build our own beautiful life by exploring some habits instead of just

watching others. The world is large and beautiful enough, do not just be immersed in social

relationships, this is only part of a human’s life. In this way, I believe that the FoMO problems

can be solved in the near future.

(Word count 1281)

Works Cited

Tanveer, Hira. “How FOMO Impacts Our Mental Health?” 28 June 2021,

How FOMO Impacts Our Mental Health? | Mental Health | oladoc.com

The Conversation. “Redesigning Social Media Platforms to Reduce FoMO.” 29 January 2020.