FOMO, or “fear of missing out”, was the subject of my guided meditation this morning. FOMO could be a leading cause to the teen mental health crisis we’re seeing. The verdict is still out on that, but many millennials and younger generations are taking note, and are actively switching off social media in an attempt to declutter.
FOMO could be linked to this concept called Hedonic Treadmill Theory, that humans have evolved to want more, to acquire more. However, we are also highly adaptive. So the things we acquire have less impact on our emotional well being over time. I think there is an interesting overlap between this Hedonic Treadmill Theory, FOMO, and with Outcomes vs. Process thinking (i.e., we see someone else’s outcome, we assume that outcome made them happier because we see the pretty pictures or hear their story, we then want that outcome, without understanding anything about how the outcome affected the person, or the process involved in acquiring that outcome.)
Taking these three concepts together, consider the public identity of Person A, an accomplished and successful athlete, from the perspective of Person B, a middle class onlooker who has no direct relationship with Person A, perhaps through the lens of an Instagram account.
Person B sees the outcomes — the fame, the houses, the cars, the vacation photos, etc. and thinks “if only I had those things (or experiences) then I would be happy.”
Person A, although finding some degree of gratification through these outcomes, emphasizes the process — the 4am gym routines, the rejections, the failures, the struggle, the injuries, the losses, the people that helped them get there, the luck involved in their journey, the pride in their persistence and mental toughness in choosing the road less traveled.
Daniel Kahneman calls this fallacy “what you see is all there is”, that our brains are conditioned to believe that the information we have is all the relevant information there is. This presents a problem, as we tend to not look for what we don’t see.