Do You Suffer from FoMo?

Are you compulsively updating your status message and uploading pictures on various social networking sites? You could be experiencing FoMo or the fear of missing out! Agreed, it is part of a happening trend and people want to make a style statement by updating their status message creatively. But, this could also be due to an urge of not wanting to miss out on anything happening on the internet and according to City psychologists, people between the ages of 16-45 are victims of this syndrome.

Dr Prashanth, clinical psychologist says, “The reason status updates are more popular is because they bring quick reaction and easy recognition which may be missing otherwise. Even if the update is fake, no one bothers to check as no one is willing to go deep and find out the reason for the update.”

Explaining that these updates are quite misleading and certainly not a true reflection of one’s emotional state, Dr Shobhana Srivastava, clinical psychologist said, “The free flow of personal information has created social havoc as now each one wants to ape another without realizing what they are doing. The fads which were earlier restricted to a small section of society are now out in the open and everyone wants to copy them. If someone is not following the so called trend of friends, there is a feeling that they have missed out.”

She adds, “Patients walk in with symptoms of depression but if one reads their status updates, they are bubbling with positive quotes, happening events or gracious comments. This could be a way to show everyone that they are happy or doing well, which is simply not true.”



Source-Medindia