Social media is prevalent in society today because it is the easiest way to communicate with friends and see what other people are doing.

It’s easy to spend hours checking social media to see if someone has replied or to see what your friends are up to. This seems harmless enough, but it could lead to a psychological phenomenon called the fear of missing out or FoMO.

“The fear of missing out has become pervasive in society,” PsychCentral stated in an article. “Teens and adults text while driving, because the possibility of a social connection is more important than their own lives (and the lives of others).”

A study done by the departments of Psychology of the University of California and the University of Rochester in 2013 defines FoMO as “The uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that you’re missing out – that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of more or something better than you.”

The study also stated that under the framing of FoMO, nearly three quarters of young adults reported that they experience the phenomenon, and continued to expand on how social media affected this fear.

The study found that FoMO tends to stem from unhappiness.

“Our findings show that those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction,” the study stated.

The study also states that social media plays a key roll in FoMO by showing that a high use of social media results in a higher fear of missing out, where as a lack of social media tends to a lack of FoMO.

According to Moira Burke, a research scientist on the Core Data Science team at Facebook, passive consumption of Facebook also correlates to a marginal increase in depression.

“If two women each talk to their friends the same amount of time, but one of them spends more time reading about friends on Facebook as well, the one reading tends to grow slightly more depressed,” Burke said. “If people are reading about lives that are much better than theirs, two things can happen. They can feel worse about themselves, or they can feel motivated.”

18drooney@usd489.com