It is Friday. Or Saturday or Tuesday. The day doesn’t matter. After work you lie at home exhausted. You would go out for a while but you don’t have a plan. So you’re wearing your pajamas and the blanket is on the couch. You open Instagram and it seems like everyone is out and about, with friends and having fun. Everyone except you. You start to get nervous and think that something is wrong, that you should be there too, wherever, but there, with the others, to share how much fun you are having in your networks trying out the trendy restaurant and upload photos so others can see it. But no, you’re at home and fear is overwhelming you just because of a few photos (and everything they bring with them). That’s it, it’s decided, it won’t happen again: the next day you will go out, no matter how tired you are or how much you want to stay at home. You won’t miss it again, even if you don’t feel like it.
This feeling is called FOMOthe acronym for Fear Of Missing Out, so that Fear of being left out. “Is a kind of social anxiety whose main component is fear,” explains Ismael Dorado, member of the board of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress (SEAS). “It is something new because it has a huge connection to the use of social networks. It is the fear that exists today of missing out by not being present at certain events,” he clarifies.
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For Dorado, there is a key factor in the emergence of this problem: the abuse of social networks. People who suffer from FOMO have one Compulsive behavior which forces them to constantly maintain these social connections. “Networks allow us to be aware of an infinite number of actions of certain people, but at the same time they create in us the fear of not being in them, of not participating,” he explains. The Fear What causes this situation increases and causes those who suffer from it to be attentive to every movement, generating even more anxiety. “With each search a new character opens up to us and we will need more and more time and more effort,” he explains.
This disorder causes a increase from Stress, fear and frustration, which will continue to multiply permanently, because social networks are infinite. Add to that the strain of being everywhere, hanging out with lots of groups of people, and climbing every moment you’re with them. It can be stressful and it is not easy to get out of the vicious circle.
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The best teenagers They have a greater predisposition to suffer from this disorder, they are more vulnerable because they are more exposed to social networks. In addition, Dorado adds that it is generally expressed in people who are prone to it perfectionism Still those own use“People who always do what they do will feel like they’re missing something.”
The constant and compulsive scrutiny of other people’s lives produced by networks frustration and a feeling of discontent those suffering from FOMO. Other people’s lives always seem perfect, especially when we include them in the equation. Influencerswhose content is only displayed the friendliest face in life, characterized by expensive trips, dinners in unaffordable restaurants, and seamless relationships in love and friendship. In comparison, other people’s lives can seem boring and full of problems. That’s why some try to imitate them, dress like them, travel where they do and upload the same content as them. For Dorado, it is this moment in which “the dark part of social networks that we never want to see emerges” and that “shows the fear of not being popular, of not counting with the rest of the people.”
The expert points out that one lives by imitation prevents normal personal development, i.e. the decision of taste, of friendships, of what brings us joy and makes us happy. So if we let ourselves be guided by the networks and look for those who are “instagrammable”, we will lose what we like. “Over time we will realize that we have a great emptiness within us because we have spent a lifetime living in a shop window without having anything in the store,” he warns.
Social networks in general should have one main use pure and simple fun, The entertainment. “If we analyze everything we see, where a photo was taken, who were in it, where they visited, what clothes they are wearing, what hairstyle they are wearing, this problem can arise,” explains Dorado. Added to this is the feeling of dissatisfaction that occurs when one compares one’s own reality with that of others based on what they upload to their networks.
Another factor to recognize it is compulsive behavior, the constant need to see what everyone is doing and to share everything that is being done so that the rest can see it, being with others and not out of it wave to break out.
Dorado believes that FOMO, which is characterized by fear and compulsion, should be treated therapy. The expert, together with a psychologist, explains the phases involved in overcoming this problem. “The first thing I have to do is regain the sense of my worth, the sense of what I am worth,” he has emphasized ever since Self-esteem It is very important and usually very low when such problems arise. For Dorado, people with FOMO should internalize a discourse of self-love: “I don’t have to fit in with another person, I don’t have to look like someone else to be a complete person.”
Secondly, it is about learning to deal with the anxiety that this disorder causes and to achieve this it incorporates the most important point of therapy, namely the regulation of compulsion and the use of social networks, and gives an example to to clarify this: “The problem is not drinking a glass of wine, but the addiction to wine.” “The moment we manage to regulate these three pillars, we would normalize the FOMO again, that is, using social networks as a means of having fun,” he concludes.