Anxiety and Fear Of Missing Out

One of the negative impacts of social media is the anxiety some users may experience when using social networks, or as a consequence of them. One buzz word we hear these days is FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out. FOMO is “anxiety stemming from the belief that others might be having fun while one is not present”, and it's associated with fear of regret.

Certainly, when I see lots of Instagram posts of people traveling around the globe I also feel like I should be traveling as well, in order to “enjoy life”. But I do enjoy other things in life, so I can't really say that makes me anxious. So I think I'm safe from FOMO. However, there's another type of related anxiety I could be suffering.

Fear Of Having Wasted Time

This is a word I made up that best describes the type of anxiety I have at times. I would define the Fear of Having Wasted Time (FOHWT) as the anxiety one suffers after having done some leisure activity and feeling that the activity should always culminate with some shareable asset.

For instance, if I play a videogame, specially a long one, I feel I have to record a video summarizing it or giving comments about it. I don't care if the video has any impact, but I feel better with myself if all those hours I invested in that game end up with me creating something based on that experience. After a couple of years, I enjoy re-watching my video and remembering the game.

The more hours you invest in the game, or the more joy you had with it, the stronger the FOHWT. If it's a short game or a game I didn't really enjoy, I don't really feel compelled to record anything. Unless the game is so bad that I think the video is going to be funny. 😅

I think this anxiety could be related to some kind of obsessive behavior. With videogames, I had a similar feeling with trophies and achievements: I felt I had to collect them all after clearing the game, not because I enjoyed doing so, but because it was visible proof that I completed it. However, I managed to get rid of that obsession by recognizing it as an obsession, not something that was really fun.

But gradually I've been replacing that obsession by another: content creation. It's certainly more fulfilling than trophies, but it may prevent us from really enjoying our leisure time. For instance, I don't feel like starting a new game until I create a video or write a blog post about the last one I cleared, and because that may take time and I'm too tired after work, I end up not doing anything.

I mentioned videogames, but it can be anything. For instance, if I read a non-fiction book, I like highlighting things and taking notes. Perhaps I create some pretty illustrated notes with the things I found more interesting, e.g. these notes from Michio Kaku's “The future of humanity”: Instagram endavidg #TheFutureOfHumanity. Right now I'm stuck in another book from Michio Kaku because before I continue to the next chapter I would like to summarize and illustrate the one I just read... 😅

Fear of wasting time

Note that FOHWT is not the same as the “fear of wasting time” (FOWT). The tense of the verb is important in this case. I think the fear of wasting time would be some type of anxiety suffered before doing some leisure activity, not after. I'm OK with playing a videogame or reading a book, but I may not start it in the first place because I may feel I may not have time later on to write about it. 😅

Although if think again, I may be experiencing FOWT in some situations as well. For instance, when I read books I usually read non-fiction because I think they may be useful for something. But a novel... will I be learning anything from it? 😅 I recently read a novel, “Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of The Future”, because I liked the game, but also because: 1) I read it in Japanese, so I was practicing Japanese and learning new words; 2) I thought I could make a video or write a blog post about it later on (I had already recorded a couple of videos about the game). 😅

Even this blog post has been born out of FOWT. I could be watching TV or chilling out before going to bed, but instead I thought I had to write all this down before I forgot about it (the concepts of FOHWT and FOWT came to my mind a couple of nights ago). By sharing it, it may reach someone and be useful to somebody. But even if it doesn't, it can be useful to myself in the future when I review my past writings. So this is also a kind of FOHWT, because I can't leave the random thoughts I have when my mind is idle go to waste. 😂

If you can relate to this, please let me know! 😃

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