‘FOMO’ a vicious circle for social media users
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-10-fomo-vicious-circle-social-media.html
As the use of social networks has risen, our society has become more and more connected to not only our friends but to strangers as well. We are constantly seeing what they are posting, tweeting, snapchatting etc., and while this connectedness can be considered a good thing, it is having some negative effects on people’s well-being. “FOMO,” or fear of missing out has become an especially prevalent issue in today’s society when you can always see what everybody else is doing. Due to social media, one can pretty much always know when their friends did something without them, or see when somebody posts about their exciting life and the adventures their having. This constant feed of other people has been shown to lead to decreases in self-esteem. The worst part is many people deal with this issue by posting and using social media, which can lead to more FOMO and the cycle spirals downwards.
In all of our ties to other people, there are always some that are stronger and some that are weaker. Both strong and weak ties on social media can affect this FOMO in different ways. Strong ties are usually one’s closer friends, the people one would usually hang out with off of social media. When they post something about some fun activity they happen to be doing without that person, or even worse with others, they wouldn’t usually feel good about that and would have rather been included. On the other hand, people usually have a lot more weak ties, so when somebody is using social media, they will see a lot more posts from these people. When they post about something they are happy about, one may not feel like they wanted to be with that weak tie, but rather that they would have liked to be having their own adventure or making their own memories. While this one negative side effect of FOMO and lower self-esteem doesn’t negate all the benefits and advantages of using social media, it is important to stay aware of both the good and bad sides of this prevalent technology.