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CHAPTER 11FOMO

It is a cold winter night and you are settled in with your significant other to spend the evening together with takeout and Netflix. You got some Chinese food from your favorite place, you are in your jammies, and the binge‐watching will soon commence. What a great night. At one point during the evening, you pick up your phone and visit Facebook or Instagram and check out the newsfeed. You see that two friends have posted videos of their vacations in the Caribbean, all of which look fabulous. The weather is great, they look great, and the drinks look way better than the boxed wine you had with your kung pao chicken. Suddenly, you are not as content with your evening as you were before you picked up the phone. You feel like you have been left out of the fun – and the sun, for that matter. You might even begin to question your choice of evening activities (or movies or food or significant others!). It is the fear of missing out, or FOMO, a term that was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013 and defined 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 better than you.” It is that impression that everyone is having a much better experience, whether it's more love and happiness or just that there is some party somewhere occurring and you are not there.

FOMO is not a new phenomenon. For thousands of years, not missing out was a pretty big deal. ...