FOMO (fear of missing out)

FOMO, the fear of missing out, is the uneasy feeling that other people are having good experiences without you. It shows up when friends post from a trip you skipped, when a group chat lights up with plans you are not part of, or when a product launch seems to have everyone talking but you. The feeling is old; what is new is how often we are shown what we are missing. A feed full of other people’s best moments turns ordinary evenings into small losses, and buying in is the fastest way to make the feeling stop.

Measuring a feeling

The acronym had been around since at least 2004, but nobody had measured the feeling until 2013, when the psychologists Andrew Przybylski, Kou Murayama, Cody DeHaan and Valerie Gladwell published three studies in Computers in Human Behavior. They described it as a lasting worry that other people may be enjoying rewarding experiences you are not part of, which comes with an urge to keep checking what everyone else is up to.

The first study built the measuring tool. The researchers drafted 32 statements about worries over missing events, experiences and conversations, and asked 1,013 adults aged 18 to 62, recruited online and living mostly in the United States and India, to rate how well each one described them. From the answers they chose the 10 statements that best captured the feeling, from mild to intense, and these became the Fear of Missing Out scale.

The second study put the scale to a nationally representative group of 2,079 working-age adults in Great Britain, aged 22 to 65, in September 2011. FOMO was highest among younger people, and the gap between men and women appeared only among the young, where men reported more of it. People who scored high on FOMO also reported lower mood, lower life satisfaction and less satisfaction of basic psychological needs, such as feeling competent, autonomous and connected to others. They used social media more.

The third study followed 87 first-year university students. Those with higher FOMO scores were more likely to use Facebook during lectures and to check messages and emails while driving.

Why the fear is so strong

The researchers’ explanation focuses on unmet needs. People who feel less connected or less in control of their lives may turn to social media to stay in the loop, and the feeds that keep them informed also show them, constantly, everything they are not doing. Time is limited, so most of what is on offer will always be missed. FOMO turns that ordinary fact into a running sense of loss, and loss aversion makes losses feel larger than gains of the same size.

Marketing research has since shown how easily the feeling can be stirred. In 2020 Megan Good and Michael Hyman reported that appeals describing the future experiences of close friends or family members can produce a spike in FOMO, and that the expected envy of others and the expected thrill of being there both raise it, while comforting rationalizations lower it.

How FOMO builds a chain

Experiences come with shopping lists. Friends post from a music festival you skipped, and when tickets for the next one go on sale with a countdown clock, you buy a $280 ticket in the first hour. The festival is three hours away, so a $210 hotel room follows. You want to look right in the photos, so there is a $120 outfit, and on the day, $60 of merchandise. Within two weeks of getting home, a group chat starts planning a trip, and the photos you posted are someone else’s reason to start their own chain. One fear of missing out produced $670 of spending, and the evidence of it set off the next round.

How sellers manufacture the fear

• Countdowns and early-bird deadlines. A timer makes waiting feel like losing. One 2019 survey of about 11,000 shopping sites found 393 countdown timers, 157 of which reset or left the offer running after reaching zero.
• Live activity. “42 people are looking at this” and “sold 300 in the last hour” put a crowd in front of you.
• Limited drops and exclusive access. A release that may not come back turns interest into urgency.
• Social notifications. Alerts that friends are interested in, going to or buying something tie the purchase to belonging.
• Waitlists. Being told you are number 4,000 in line makes getting in feel like a prize.

How to quiet it

1. Name what you would miss. Is it the event, the people or not being left out? If it is the people, there may be a cheaper way to see them.
2. Turn off the prompts. Disable sale, launch and event notifications, and mute accounts whose main effect is to show you what you are missing.
3. Budget for events once a year. Decide how many trips, concerts and events you will pay for, and choose them when you are calm, not when a countdown is running.
4. Remember the next one. There is almost always another festival, sale or release. A short delay, or the 30-day rule for bigger purchases, lets the urgency drain away so you can see whether the want remains.

Where it meets the Diderot effect

FOMO often starts a chain with an experience rather than an object. The event demands the outfit, the trip demands the luggage, the photos demand to look like everyone else’s. Then the Diderot effect takes over, as the new purchases make what you already own look out of place. The two together explain why one invitation can lead to months of spending. Our seven rules for stopping a chain apply as well to a festival kit as to a living room, and the scarcity effect covers the countdown side of the same rush.