How to deal with social FOMO?

Limit your time on social media. Of course, this may be an obvious answer, and it may be easier said than done, but the amount of time we spend on social media is often the root of the problem. By spending hours on end scrolling through your feed and wishing you could have the lives of the people you follow, you are missing out on creating happy memories yourself. Take note of the things you are grateful for. Remember what you see on social media isn't reality. Nothing - and nobody – is perfect. We all have our own flaws, we just don’t want to publicise them for the whole world to see. If you had £86,400 and someone stole £10, would you throw away the £86,390 as revenge? Of course not. You’d move on and live. See, you have 86,400 seconds in a day. Don’t let ten seconds of dwelling on a post online ruin the remaining 86,390 seconds. Live your life, and make the best out of it that you can.

To deal with social FOMO, we can prevent it from happening by becoming more mindful. We become more mindful by training the mind to be more present and less distracted, and we do that via the practice of meditation. Something as simple and straightforward as a 10-minute guided meditation may be a gentle way to bring more mindfulness into the day. Limiting our social media use may lead to significant improvement in our well-being, according to a 2018 study. Participants in that study who limited social media time to approximately 30 minutes a day experienced a notable decrease in feelings of loneliness and depression over 3 weeks. The next time we’re able to sense we’re on the verge of a social media binge, let’s consider pausing to notice the feeling. What’s motivating us to log on? What storylines or fears may be fueling the thoughts that surface as we scroll? If and when negative emotions begin to arise, we can use mindfulness to pause, observe, and consciously direct the attention back to the present. We can also try 9 meditations that can help us deal with FOMO, including Compassion and Awareness guidance, Putting Down Our Phones guidance, and Managing Anxiety 10-day course.