On FOMO and social media
One of the great illnesses of our social media age is FOMO: the fear of missing out. The ideology of social media, the way that the apps are engineered to engineer us is to keep us in a constant need for information, no matter how pointless it is, no matter how ephemeral. We must be plugged in to everything at all times.
Of course, many of us are old enough to remember when this wasn't the case. We might read the morning paper and watch the evening news. We might read magazines. Our exposure to the world's news was discrete and finite. Even the early cable news channels were rolling news blocks, repeating the same stories every half hour, not trying to find something to keep you tuned in for hours at a time. When a major event happened, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, then you received wall-to-wall coverage. Not everything was "Breaking News". You had a chance to get away from it all, to not pay attention, to attend to other things.
The only way social media and news corporations can make money in these our latter days is by getting you and keeping you addicted. The algorithms are designed to keep you on your phone, rewarding you social validation in the way of likes, reposts, and comments. You're connected to a broader world you never could have dreamed of. But any addiction is pernicious:
The need for constant updates and fear of missing out [emphasis mine] reinforces repetitive use despite negative consequences. Emotional dependence develops when mood heavily relies on reactions, comments, or online validation. The behavior of the user may shift from a habit to a dependency that affects mental, emotional, and social health. Compulsive checking of notifications, including tasks that require focus, indicates a loss of control over usage. Anxiety and discomfort arise when individuals are not able to interact with [social media], signaling a growing dependency.
Lord knows I've succumbed to it from time to time. The constant need to be in-the-know, to commiserate with the like-minded, to fight perceived enemies, affects me just as it does anyone using social media. I've been on this merry-go-round since the 1990s, when bulletin board systems (BBS) arose, followed by IRC (internet relay chat). (The one great thing about IRC is that I met my wife on it. So all social media isn't problematic.) And that's simply unhealthy. What social media does is that it works on your flight-or-fight responses. It makes you constantly on edge, constantly wary, constantly on guard for the next thing. We are overstimulated, unable or unwilling to turn off, to rest, to reflect. We have to be on all the time, ready for the next viral event, lest we miss out and have our lives somehow diminished.
This is, obviously, not the way for humans to live their best lives. Being constantly bombarded by external stimuli overloads our brains. It's the way drug and alcohol addiction work. What was posited as a way to connect the world and understand different people has turned into a way to control and socialize you to consume. As the old saw goes: On social media, you are the product, not the customer. You are being sold to advertisers. And as the product, social media firms have to keep you on their platforms, clicking, reading, seeing ads. And these companies ply on your fear of missing something to keep you online. We are like cattle in the pen, being fattened up to serve these companies' real customers.
Our mental health is too precious to give over to an algorithm which is designed to increase profits. When you argue with people online you may think that you're striking a blow for your favored beliefs. But do you think those people with whom you argue are actually human? With the ever-increasing use of artificial intelligence, the bot-to-human ratio will narrow even further. And during tense times, as during US elections, bot-to-human posts are almost at parity. And even if the account with whom you are arguing is human, the chances are they've been influenced by bots pushing particular memes.
Do what you need to do to preserve yourself. Nothing will be solved on X or Facebook or Bluesky. Take breaks—long breaks if needed. And if even that isn't enough? Then social media is more of a harm than good for you. There's no shame in deciding that something is not for you. There are many ways to stay informed; social media may be one of the least healthy. Your world will go on if you miss out on something in the immediate moment. You are far more important.