Can't pick a dress or a holiday in case a friend does better? You've got a modern malaise called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
Do you ever find yourself standing in a supermarket aisle, unable to make up your mind which brand of cereal to buy? Or looking at the list of new films coming out, literally paralysed by choice about which one to see? Where to go on holiday? What colour to paint your bathroom?
Or, more invidiously, do you endlessly worry that where you are right now is not as much fun, or important, as somewhere else? That your friends are leading fuller, happier lives than you?
Sound familiar? Then join a very modern club. For we increasingly live in a world where choice is no longer a luxury, rather it’s a stick we beat ourselves with.
Modern Malaise: Do you ever find yourself standing in a supermarket aisle, unable to make up your mind which brand of cereal to buy? Or looking at the list of new films coming out, literally paralysed by choice about which one to see?
Faced with endless options and possibilities, we torment ourselves with the thought that every time we choose one thing over another, we’re turning down a myriad other possibilities, shutting the door on what might be something better.
If you recognise a part of yourself in this modern malaise — and I certainly do — then welcome to the latest syndrome: FOMO, or ‘Fear Of Missing Out’.
What was once known as ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ has morphed - in our modern, multi-media, multi-tasking, multi-choice age - into a full-blown psychological condition.
The symptoms? They’re all around us. We fill our shopping baskets with things we don’t need - just in case we miss out on that day’s ‘must-have’ dress or a special offer that others are taking advantage of.
In our social lives, too, we no longer settle for the friends we’ve got or the events we’ve got planned. We want more. So when we hear that someone has had a good time at a party which we didn’t go to, we’re envious, then full of self-doubt and anxiety that we must be less popular than them.
And in our brave new world of social media, where everyone is communicating what they are doing every minute of the day, this sense of paranoia reaches extremes, because we’re not only aware of our own choices but bombarded with those of others as well.
Take a look at the people in the cars alongside you next time you’re on the motorway. I’ll bet you at least one driver will be texting from their mobile phone — because the possibility of a social connection is more important than their own safety (and the lives of others).
These are the sort of people who interrupt one call to take another, even when they don’t know who’s on the other line. They check their Twitter stream while on a date, because something more interesting or entertaining just might be happening.
No escape: In our brave new world of social media, where everyone is communicating what they are doing every minute of the day, our sense of paranoia reaches extremes
Where once we only worried about keeping up with the folks next door, now we have to worry about keeping up with the whole world, who keep us updated 24/7 through emails, texts, Twitter streams and Facebook updates.
So, at the click of a mouse, you can hear about John’s holiday in the tropics and Angela’s gorgeous new Dolce & Gabbana dress, which she picked up in a sale, and which is going to look so cool at Fred’s party tonight.
Fred’s party? Help, you’re not even invited. What once remained secret is now public knowledge and, unless you are forged from steel, it’s impossible not to be affected by it.
And it can be paralysing — particularly for the young, who have never known another way.
The daughter of a friend of mine — lovely, talented and in her late 20s — won’t commit to a career because she thinks that going along one particular road will mean she’s shut out of others.
So she does four different jobs while simultaneously lamenting the fact that she didn’t train to be a doctor when she was 18. She wants to make a choice, because it will make life easier, but she’s paralysed by the fear of making that choice.
Another friend’s daughter is even more conflicted. According to her mother, she can’t decide on any social engagement until the last possible moment because she wants to keep her options open. The result? She spends most of the day deliberating about that night’s plans.
I used to go through a version of that, too — not spending my entire day planning the evening, but sometimes cancelling a date at the last minute because something else had come up that, at that moment, seemed more important.
I’ve also, I shamefully admit, agreed to go to up to four or five different parties or events on one single evening, unwilling to say no to any of them out of fear that I won’t be invited again, then juggling what to do, often with minutes to spare.
Leaving aside the potential rudeness of accepting an invitation and then not showing up, this kind of indecision, of holding out for what you think is the most interesting option, saps the spirit and creates anxiety.
Are you suffering from FOMO? These are the sort of people who interrupt one call to take another, even when they don't know who's on the other line. They check their Twitter stream while on a date, because something more interesting might be happening
I’ll never forget the time I cancelled a visit to my friend in hospital, who had just been through a very difficult labour, to go to a smart party in London where I thought I might meet a man (I should stress I was single at the time).
As so often happens in that situation — where you have let people down in your slavish desperation to make the most out of every conceivable opportunity — the party was terrible and I spent the evening regretting my decision not to see my friend.
Having too many options is paralysing and exhausting to the human psyche. It leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them and blame our failures entirely on ourselves.
We can feel we’ve failed in everything — from our choices of consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to our lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, who and when to marry).
Now that social media sites allow us to make instant comparisons not only with our friends but with people we’ve never even met face to face, the scope for this kind of undermining is limitless. I believe women are particularly affected by FOMO, prone as they are to comparing themselves to other women, and envy.
You buy one dress but your girlfriend buys the other one you were considering, and you feel resentful that she ended up looking better. You get a beauty treatment, but wish you had chosen another.
Hell, I have ruined entire holidays worrying I should have chosen another destination.
Richard Layard, LSE professor and co-founder of the Happiness Party, which launched last week, is an expert on the destructiveness of too much choice.
‘Too much never makes people happy, and if we’re given a lot of choice we reject it,’ he says, citing an experiment where a group of people were shown two shelves containing jars of jam.
‘One shelf had 30 jars, the other had six. They were asked which one they wanted to chose a jam from. Almost all chose the shelf with only six jars. It is more simple, less time-consuming.’
In his 2004 book The Paradox Of Choice, Barry Schwartz tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life. Why is it that societies of great abundance, where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before, are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression?
Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice for the greater good is always a good thing, but Schwartz argues the opposite.
He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in our Western world is actually making us miserable, and our current ability to rate our lifestyles and social status against those of others causes resentment, too.
'I believe women are particularly affected by FOMO, prone as they are to comparing themselves to other women, and envy'
A woman I know who works in advertising told me that she felt fine about her life — until she opened a Facebook account and started comparing every detail of her own life to those of her network of contacts.
‘I am 28, with three flatmates, and am perfectly happy with my lot. But then I see someone posting pictures of their precious baby or their wonderful new home, and I just want to die.’
On those occasions, she said, her knee-jerk reaction is often to post an account of a particularly cool thing she has done, or to upload a fun picture from her own weekend.
This may make her feel better - but, of course, it just generates envy, resentment and anxiety in another unsuspecting person, and thus a vicious circle is created.
The sad irony about this epidemic of FOMO is that we do miss out and end up diminishing our own lives. Life becomes something that simply happens while we’re waiting for something else - something better - to happen.
Not that we ever really experience the act of waiting for anything any more - there is always a smartphone to check, an email to read, which transports you from your own reality now, to someone else’s.
If there is any cure for this condition then it is surely the eventual wisdom of experience.
One of the great advantages of being older, I often think, is that I am nearly always happy to be right where I am, rather than living with an almost perpetual sense that I could be happier if only I was somewhere else.
Nowadays, I feel on top of my choices, and while I have a lingering sense of anxiety, even guilt, that I haven’t read Middlemarch, haven’t been to the Great Wall of China, still haven’t lost a stone since January, have failed to read a newspaper for two days and have played too many games of Scrabble on my iPad - I like the life I’m in more than I’ve ever liked it before.
The reality is that there are few things so truly important in life that they can’t wait. If you’re the Prime Minister, then you have a legitimate reason to check your texts during dinner. But everyone else, not so much.
Isn’t it time you, too, learned to settle for what you have, rather than clinging to the fear you may be missing out on something better?
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