FOMO

With the advent of social media and it’s overwhelming feeds, a new wave of fear has shrouded us all- The ‘Fear Of Missing Out’. It’s more like a feeling of being glued to the ground when everything else around us moves on. A kind of anxiety that we are not able to partake in the fun that others are having out there. But is it really that simple to be neglected or has it taken on our lives unbeknownst of us all?

FOMO or the ‘Fear Of Missing Out’ is not just another hormone induced teenage drama, but a real phenomenon that is affecting our mental health irrespective of the age groups we belong to. It is becoming quietly common to have this phobia of missing out.  

Our social media feeds are bombarded with statuses and stories of people known and unknown. We enjoy reading/watching whatever is shared by our friends, acquaintances, celebrities, public figures or other people we follow, oblivious of its darker side, where it takes a toll on our emotions. The indefinite scrolls and swipes are taking us down to gutters where we drown in inadequacies and diffidence. 

Privacy has become a frayed concept and personal lives are vividly painted on public platforms. Birthdays, Anniversaries, Monthiversaries (mind you, the most irritating of them all), everything is celebrated publicly on social media because we spend a major portion of our lives online now. And we enjoy taking a peek into others lives more than ever now, as everything is on public display and we don’t even need to peek. We just have to open our eyes to see what is there right in front of us. But the more we know about what a person is, what they do, where they go, what they buy etc. the more conscious we become of our own lives and how badly it sucks (compared to theirs). 

Now the worth of our lives are determined by the likes ,comments and shares that our posts get. We are defined by the candidness of our pictures and how widely accepted we are by this virtual world (A world which has been successfully ruining our lives since its inception). The more the social media pervades into our day to day lives, the more easier it is to lose our self worth and loathe the lives we lived so far.

This phobia, which has invaded our minds, makes us want to do things we never even wanted to in the first place. And we end up questioning ourselves, ‘are we the only ones stuck in time?’ We,who are under the spell of social media constantly obsessing about the things we are missing out on are slowly turning into maniacs and sadly, we think its normal.

The travel vlogs we find online, make us want to go to places we have never even heard of. The extravagant wedding pictures of celebrities plants unrealistic dreams in us that we could never ever afford. The shopping haul videos make us believe that nothing we own would ever be enough. The beauty blogs never allow us to be contented with our own reflections. We swim through these waves of toxicity on a daily basis without even knowing where we are headed. 

Comparing our ordinary lives with that of the ones portrayed by others on social media is the stupidest thing to do, ’cause all we could ever gain from it is a hell load of disappointment. The things you don’t possess, the places you have never traveled to, the adventures you have never experienced, the food you never tasted, the kind of relationships you have never been in, the memories that you never made, the fun you never had — this is what it basically does; accentuate what is lacking in our lives. But the fact that none of us actually walk on to the brighter side and take a look at what we actually posses in our lives, is absurd. 

Rather than cherishing the existence of certain things in our lives, we get perturbed about the thing we are missing out. But how could we miss out on things we didn’t even want? Just because ‘n’ number of people do a certain thing, doesn’t mean we should be blindly aping them, does it? Aren’t we losing precious moments in our lives obsessing about the things we might be missing out? What we need to realize is that there is a life outside hashtags and we ought to live it, not with fear; but with passion in our hearts and thirst in our souls.