What Will We Truly Miss? (The Fear of Missing Out)

Desire can be a significant hindrance to living a purposeful and tranquil life. As soon as we want something, we fall into a state of lack, and we feel restless. And the obvious way out is to fulfill that desire so that we can feel content and happy again.

A much-discussed phenomenon in the current age that arouses such restlessness and lack is the so-called fear of missing out, also abridged as FOMO. The fear of missing out occurs in many different scenarios. For example, a stock market investor fears that he’ll miss out on profits when he doesn’t invest in a specific stock at a particular moment. Another example is a college student who never misses a party because she fears that she’ll miss out on the fun.

FOMO often drives people mad. Studies show that the fear of missing out can lead to extreme dissatisfaction and can be hazardous for our mental and physical health. FOMO is associated with loneliness, depression, and anxiety. Thus, behind this trendy acronym hides a dark, devastating experience amplified through social media, which presents a never-ending tsunami of snapshots of our lives’ highlights.

So, where does this fear come from? What do people who suffer from FOMO actually fear? And how can we shut it down? This video essay explores the fear of missing out and presents suggestions and solutions from ancient philosophies like Stoicism and Epicureanism.

If we look closely at the fear of missing out, we might ask ourselves the following question: Are we afraid to miss out on what we think we miss out on? Or, are we afraid to experience the pain of having missed out? It seems that the very occurrence of having missed out on something lies at the center of FOMO, and not so much the thing we miss out on itself.

Take, for example, the student who knows it’s better not to go to that party on the college campus because she’s broke and needs to study that weekend. Eventually, she decides to go nonetheless. And the reason is not the party itself, as it’s just a dime in a dozen; it’s the frightening idea of having missed out on something (anything!) that others have not.

Or: That she wasn’t part of the story she shares with others, with those who also have that experience, and not being the odd one out by not having experienced it and being judged because of that. But what if there weren’t any parties at all, perhaps due to a contagious virus? Would she then experience the fear of missing out as well? Probably not, because when there are no parties, no one attends parties, so there’s nothing to miss out on what others wouldn’t miss out on.

Thus, there’s an element of comparison that seems to play a crucial part in “the fear of missing out,” which is that “I fear that I might not have what others do have. But if others don’t have it, then it’s okay for me not to have it either.” We can see this element of comparison with investors in, for example, the stock market or the more speculative and volatile crypto market.

Again we could ask ourselves what the dominant aspect of their fear of missing out is. Is it just the fear of missing out on profits? Or is the fear of the painful experience of seeing everyone else making profits while you’re not? “Comparison is the thief of joy,” American president Theodore Roosevelt once stated. The fear of missing out seems especially built on a sense of comparison; not having what others have, not being able to experience what others experience.

But living life keeping up with the rest of the world is like carrying water to the sea. In reality, we miss out all the time. Modern life offers us so many choices, and there are so many things happening on this globe that we humans, with our short life spans, miss out on almost everything. We can’t have it all.

But in an age in which we don’t just have an abundance of options, but these options are also unprecedentedly visible to us through the media, we’re even more cursed with the awareness that we’ll only ever have and experience a fraction of what’s out there. The more we desire to have...