What is FOMO? The fear of missing out, explained

FOMO is one of those acronyms that spread because it named something everyone already felt. So, plainly: what is FOMO. It stands for the fear of missing out, and it describes the anxious sense that others are enjoying experiences without you, paired with a compulsion to stay constantly connected so you never miss anything. It feels modern, but it runs on a very old instinct.

What does FOMO stand for?

FOMO stands for the fear of missing out. Researchers define it as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which you are absent.^[1] It is a normal feeling, not a disorder, and nothing here is medical advice.

What does FOMO mean in text?

Fear of missing out, used exactly as it sounds. In a message or a post it is shorthand for wishing you were somewhere you are not (“serious FOMO seeing everyone at the beach”), or for saying yes to something only because you are worried about missing it (“I only went out of FOMO”). It is informal, so it belongs in texts, group chats and social media rather than formal writing.

Who coined the term FOMO?

2004 is the earliest widely cited use. In a May 2004 column for The Harbus, the Harvard Business School student paper, the student Patrick McGinnis described what he called “two FOs”: FOMO, the fear of missing out, and FOBO, the fear of a better option.^[4] He used them to explain why classmates were so slow to commit to invitations. The phrase then spread through social media, and researchers gave it a formal definition in 2013.^[1]

Is FOMO a real thing?

Yes. It is a measurable, well-studied experience rather than just a hashtag. In 2013 researchers narrowed a pool of 32 candidate statements down to a 10-item scale for measuring FOMO, then used it on a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 adults, and found it was highest in younger people, and in young men in particular.^[1] It is not a medical diagnosis, and feeling it is normal. What the research links it to is feeling less connected and less in control of your life, not a flaw of character.

Why do we get FOMO?

2 things work together: a basic need to belong, and a steady supply of reminders of what you are not part of. In the 2013 study that defined FOMO, people who felt their needs for connection, competence and control were less well met reported more fear of missing out, and FOMO in turn was linked to heavier social media use.^[1] So if you get FOMO easily, it usually says more about how connected and settled you feel right now, and how much of other people’s lives you are shown, than about your character. The same study found it was highest in younger people.^[1]

Is FOMO normal? Yes. It is an ordinary social feeling, not a mental illness or a diagnosis. The caveat: if it sits alongside persistent low mood or anxiety, that is worth raising with your GP. This is general information, not medical advice.

Where does FOMO come from?

The fear of missing out was given a careful definition in a 2013 study by Andrew Przybylski and colleagues, who described it as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.^[1] Their work did two useful things. It produced a validated scale to measure FOMO, and it traced where it comes from.

The root, they found, is not shallowness. It is unmet psychological needs. People who felt less connected to others, and less in control of their own lives, reported more FOMO. In other words, the feeling is an expression of a basic human drive to belong. When that drive is undernourished, the antenna for what you might be missing turns up.

Does social media make FOMO worse?

Here is where an old instinct meets new technology. A social feed is, structurally, a continuous stream of other people’s highlights: the parties, the holidays, the wins, all curated and posted at their best. That is close to the perfect stimulus for FOMO. You are comparing your ordinary inside view of your own life with everyone else’s edited outside view of theirs.

And the comparison appears to have a cost. In a well-known study, Ethan Kross and colleagues tracked young adults’ Facebook use and found that the more they used it, the more their moment-to-moment mood and overall life satisfaction declined over time.^[2] The feed promises connection and often delivers comparison.

How do you stop FOMO?

You cannot delete an instinct, but you can stop feeding it so heavily.

• Reduce the input. Less feed, less fuel. In a controlled study, people who limited social media to about 30 minutes a day for three weeks reported meaningful drops in loneliness and depression compared with a control group.^[3] You do not have to quit, only to bound it.
• Curate ruthlessly. Mute or unfollow the accounts that reliably leave you feeling behind. You are allowed to choose what your attention is exposed to.
• Reconnect for real. Because FOMO grows from unmet belonging, the strongest antidote is actual connection: time with people, in person, off the feed.
• Practise enough. The opposite of missing out is not doing everything. It is being genuinely present where you are, which is a skill worth building.

That last point is the heart of it. The fear of missing out keeps you looking at the screen for the life happening elsewhere, and away from the life happening here. Learning to be content in your own unremarkable, unposted moment is the quiet skill underneath all of this, and it is what How to Be Bored Again is about.