What Happened to FOMO?
We now fear taking part more than we fear missing out
When talking about the harms of social media today, one of the first problems people mention is FOMO—fear of missing out. Scroll through Instagram and see your friends having fun at a party you weren’t invited to. Check Snapchat to find everyone’s Bitmojis together on Snap Map without you. This feeling of constantly missing out, we’re told, is a major cause of anxiety and depression for Gen Z.
But I don’t believe that’s true anymore.
More often, I see the opposite. Social media doesn’t make Gen Z afraid to miss out; it makes us want to miss out. We want to avoid the risk, the rejection, the awkwardness, the effort and energy that the real world demands. Our major problem isn’t fear of missing out. It’s fear of taking part.
Look at how many young people are scared of doing everyday things. I don’t just mean fear of learning to drive, or getting a job—I mean scared to order in restaurants. Can’t walk into a cafe. Don’t want to open their door for a delivery. Under the hashtag #socialanxiety on TikTok, which has nearly 3 billion views, young people are sharing symptoms, describing debilitating anxiety, even recording their panic attacks in public. One British TikToker hosts a series called “Doing Things You’re Afraid of To Show You It’s Okay”, where she films herself facing challenges like getting in an elevator, asking for help in a supermarket, and asking for directions. It’s great to see someone working on their anxiety — but what’s alarming is how popular these videos are, and how many users say they have the same fears. Meanwhile forums like r/socialanxiety on Reddit–which has over 400,000 members–are filled with teenagers and young adults admitting that they are afraid of the real world. They feel much more comfortable online.
Many young people even fear making phone calls, and avoid it as much as possible. One study from last year found that 90% of Gen Z say they feel anxious speaking on the phone. Not to mention the never-ending TikToks and tweets from young people talking about “phone anxiety”, writing down scripts before they speak, or filming themselves panicking at a ringtone.
Across social media, there’s also a growing celebration of missing out. The phrase “JOMO” (Joy of Missing Out) is catching on, along with constant TikToks, tweets and memes about the relief of cancelled plans. We say this is about wellness, but I’m not so sure. We call it self-care, but that just sounds nicer than self-isolation. We pretend it’s about relaxing –“protecting our peace!” – rather than retreating. Missing out is good for our mental health, we tell ourselves. We’re better off inside.
Maybe FOMO is still the most pressing concern for millennials, who typically first accessed social media in their late teens or early twenties. But I don’t believe it’s our biggest concern anymore. Not for the digitally native generation. Not for the generation who had the first phone-based childhood, who spent their formative years in a pandemic, who have had less face-to-face interaction than any other in history. The only world we’ve ever known is one where we can get everything we need without interacting with another human: self-service checkouts, delivery apps, dating apps, online porn, online lectures, online communities. And if all that makes us socially anxious? There’s an app for that too.
As pre-teens, many of us spent hours each day on social media platforms. Platforms designed to make us self-conscious: about how we look, how we present, what parts of ourselves we want to display. We inspected every inch of our face with filters and editing apps. We scrutinised how we stand and speak in every Instagram picture and Snapchat Story. We examined every word of our tweets and status updates. With instant feedback on every part of ourselves, we learnt to perform and manage it all perfectly. We learnt to love our little worlds of control. Here we can rehearse every flirty DM before we send it. We can check every email with ChatGPT. We can get the angles and lighting perfect before we show our faces to the world. In contrast, when it comes to real life, with its awkward conversations, its messy relationships, it’s live. It’s real. It’s terrifying. We would rather miss out.
Even the definition of FOMO itself has started to change. For millennials, FOMO meant fear of missing out on what was happening in the real world: physical experiences and events other people were enjoying. Now it seems to mean fear of missing out on what’s happening online: notifications, memes, group chats, TikTok trends, Snapchat Stories. For Gen Z, FOMO isn’t a harm of social media; it’s a motivation to use it. It’s what traps young people on TikTok and Instagram. They fear being left out of social media itself.
Some might say this is an exaggeration, maybe even a moral panic. Older generations who try to talk about this often get accused of mocking Gen Z or being out of touch. Younger people who try to talk about it are reminded that it’s nothing new, or accused of trying to speak for everyone. And of course it isn’t true for all of Gen Z. But we have to talk honestly about who it is true for. The children who are shutting themselves away in their rooms. The pre-teens who are more comfortable watching YouTubers than playing with friends. The 25-year-olds who are terrified to talk on the phone. Parents tell us that this is happening. Teachers and professors are sounding the alarm. Therapists are warning us. Employers are desperately trying to address it. We can’t keep pretending this is normal, nothing new.
It seems profoundly new to me. So new we can barely make sense of it. When have we ever had a generation so comfortable with online attention yet so deeply uncomfortable with real-life interaction? When have young people been so crippled by social anxiety yet comfortable telling millions of strangers online about it? Young people who can post selfies for the world to see but can’t bear making eye contact? Who find it entirely normal to broadcast their faces and feelings and private lives online, but feel their hearts pound when someone says hi to them on the street? Who say they feel intensely lonely yet hide from human connection?
We have to take this seriously. There are young people whose natural human instincts—instincts typically on overdrive for adolescents, like the drives to explore, to connect, to take risks, to be independent—have been numbed. Teenagers who would once stay up all night chatting on the phone have become teenagers terrified to hear the sound of a ringtone. Teenagers desperate to sneak out with their friends have become teenagers dreading plans with each other. Teenagers begging their parents to let friends stay over have become teenagers using an AI Excuse Generator to cancel plans guilt-free. This is not normal teenage angst. This is a generational tragedy. When we have this many young people scared of social interaction, diagnosed with anxiety disorders, dreading hearing another human voice on the phone, I think that calling for drastic change is the only humane thing to do. This is not a groundless moral panic.
It’s not too late to change course. First we have to recognise how unprecedented and how serious this situation is. For young people who feel this way, that means facing up to your anxiety. Not laughing about being unable to answer the door but taking it seriously and trying to overcome it. Not pretending that you are happier alone in your room but being brutally honest with yourself. Not making social anxiety a fun part of your online identity, but committing to change.
The key, psychologists tell us, is to take risks and re-engage with the real world. Risks don’t have to be major—they can be small, consistent steps outside your comfort zone. Avoid reaching for your phone at every awkward moment. Order from a person instead of an app. Call someone instead of sending an email. Make plans and stick to them. Show up and be awkward anyway. Look out at the world instead of down at your screen. I know these feel like real risks for a lot of young people; I know it’s not easy. The anxiety can be agonising. Hearts pound at phone calls. Palms sweat at starting conversation. All the more reason to do it. Again and again. Small, consistent risks. Risk rejection, risk embarrassment, risk fumbling a phone call, risk these things until they don’t feel like risks anymore—until they feel like life.
But change has to begin now. Because a generation this fearful, this risk-averse, this socially anxious, is the perfect customer base for AI. Teenagers too afraid to approach each other will flirt with AI boyfriends and girlfriends instead. Children without any friends will chat to an AI necklace who is “always listening”. A generation who love their comfortable little worlds of control, who want to miss out on the messy and the unpredictable, who are ready to be relieved of the effort and the energy, do not stand a chance against what’s coming next.
So, fear of missing out? I wish Gen Z felt it a little more. That was a healthy response, a good instinct. We need it back. We should fear missing out on what’s happening in the real world. We should fear missing out on confidence, on social skills, on our own potential. And most of all, we should fear platforms that make us want to miss out on all of this. Reject platforms that make you want to watch others’ lives while letting yours pass by. Resist platforms that feed you infinite information on a screen, replacing finite moments with people right in front of you. Quit any platform powerful enough to drain these basic human drives and convince you this is all about connection.
You know, sometimes I think about myself as a shy teenager. I can’t think about it too long, because my heart breaks, but sometimes I let myself. I think back on everything I missed out on—parties I was too shy to go to, people I was too afraid to introduce myself to, friendship groups I wasn’t confident enough to even try belonging to. I think about every time I didn’t want the discomfort, every time I decided to sit inside and scroll, every time I shut the door and kidded myself I was happier that way. Every time I cancelled on a friend because it was easier. I think about that life continuing for me. I think of my future children missing out that way. Nothing scares me more.
Again, I’m not trying to speak for a generation. I’m not saying everyone feels this way or that I have all the answers. But if I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that the only thing scarier than the real world is never being brave enough to enter it. The life to be afraid of is the one unlived. So go. Get up. Get out. Give it all you’ve got. Fear missing out again. And then refuse to do it any longer.
If you’d like to spend more time in the real world but aren’t sure of the first step to take, this is your last chance to join me in going phone-free every Friday.
You can sign up to our challenge here:
Part of it is the fear of being victimized. You can’t be phished, stalked, hurt, or taken advantage of if you disengage from the situations that make such victimization possible.
Some of that comes from having all the world’s problems immediately dumped into your smartphone 24/7/365. The human psyche cannot handle unrelenting evidence of tragedy everywhere. No wonder no one feels safe and subsequently withdraws.
Also, mistakes seem to be punished more severely. There is so much official bureaucracy surrounding or gatekeeping everything, one misstep when engaging it can mire you in it and potentially be ruinous. Better not to engage at all than risk engaging wrongly and incurring the wrath of the government, business, social, or cultural entity you “wronged.” The religious concept of grace is in short supply everywhere, and people feel the mercilessness and withdraw.
Thank you, Freya, for this piece and stoking the discussion that must ensue before we lose so many peeps forever. My GenX heart aches because of the techno-crack environment we’ve brought upon ourselves and y’all are suffering the most. I consider it my social duty to gently interact with younger people I come into contact with in the world and “chit chat” with them. I would say about 50% of the time they are uncomfortable but by the end of the encounter they realize no harm has come to them. Maybe there’s even a positive buzz from being in contact with another real-life human? Brains are elastic, and they can learn to do this, it’s not too late. The older generations are largely responsible and we have to do better. It is our job to TEACH what our batshit American society has taken away. PLEASE, everyone, especially older peeps, let’s start up the art of the chit-chat again. The options on the table are conversation or violence. The less conversation, the less social cohesion, the easier it is to consider your neighbor a “non-human.” Praying for you, Freya, and all the youth and for everyone to find our way back to a functioning society.