Swap FOMO for JOMO

Quick Win

Does your social media feed have you worried that you’re missing out on your friends’ fun activities? Instead, focus on being present and embrace what you’re doing here and now.

Try This Today

• Schedule social media breaks. Set aside daily blocks of device-free time so you can relish your own moments rather than envy others’. Distraction-free mealtimes, for instance, may help you eat more mindfully and savor the flavors. If you like daily walks, leave your phone at home and let your senses take in the sights, smells and sounds of your surroundings.
• Choose your own adventures. Find joy in missing out on what others are doing by experiencing things for yourself. Brainstorm some things you’d like to do and make them happen: ake a photography class, go camping, cook dinner with friends.
• Take control. It’s hard to break social media habits, but can help you temporarily block your access to Facebook, WhatsApp and other services. You can choose to block sites or apps, or shut off your internet connection entirely, for a few minutes or a few hours, while you do your own thing.

Why

Do you fret that you’re not having as much fun as all the people you follow on social media? That anxious feeling is called FOMO, or the fear of missing out. But you can find the joy of missing out, or JOMO, too, as reported in 2022 in Computers in Human Behavior. Immediately after a six-hour outage of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other Meta-owned feeds in October 2021, researchers surveyed 571 Israeli adults ages 19 to 83 and found that one of the major reactions was JOMO. Survey respondents left statements such as “I realized I miss the silence of the times before social media” and “I wish there were two days a week when the [social media] networks were inaccessible for everyone.”