Why Do We Get FOMO? The Psychology Behind Fear of Missing Out

Sometimes you don’t realise how much you wanted to be somewhere until you find out everyone else was there. You could’ve been perfectly happy with your decision to stay home, save the money or do something else, then you see the photos, hear what happened or listen to everyone talking about it afterwards and suddenly you’re wondering whether you should’ve gone.

The strange part is that you might not even care that much about what you missed. You may have had very little interest in the event itself, yet knowing other people experienced something together without you can create a completely different feeling because they now have the stories, jokes, memories and conversations that came from being there. You’re hearing about something from the outside while everybody else seems to understand what happened from the inside.

I think that’s an important part of FOMO that can get overlooked. Fear of missing out can obviously involve wanting an experience, but sometimes it feels closer to the fear of being the one who misses out, especially when the thing happening gives other people another reason to connect while you’re somewhere else.

Sometimes the thing you’re afraid of missing isn’t the event. It’s the shared experience everybody else gets to keep.

What Is FOMO?

FOMO stands for fear of missing out and describes the uneasy feeling that other people may be having rewarding experiences that you’re absent from. It can involve nights out, holidays, festivals, relationships, opportunities, conversations, events or almost anything else that makes you feel as though something worthwhile is happening somewhere you’re not.

Social media has made FOMO much easier to notice because we can now see what people are doing while they’re doing it, although FOMO isn’t only a social-media experience. You can feel it when friends make plans you can’t attend, when everybody at work is talking about a programme you haven’t watched or when a major event seems to become the only thing people are talking about for a week.

There can also be a difference between missing something and feeling as though you’re the person who missed it. Missing one night out probably won’t change your life, but sitting there afterwards while everybody laughs about something that happened can make your absence feel more important than the actual event was.

Why Do We Get FOMO?

Human beings are social, and feeling connected to other people matters to us more than we probably notice during an ordinary day. Psychologists have studied our need to belong for decades, with research suggesting that forming and maintaining stable social relationships is an important part of human motivation.

You can see versions of that everywhere without needing to look at psychology research. People gather around football clubs, music artists, television programmes, hobbies, games, restaurants, pubs, workplaces, events and thousands of other shared interests because having something in common gives people somewhere to meet, something to experience together and something to talk about afterwards.

If you could somehow take a bird’s-eye view of the entire world and see everybody’s social connections at once, I imagine you’d see millions of little bubbles forming everywhere. One bubble might contain people watching the same football match, another could contain thousands of people at a concert, while others would form around friendship groups, pubs, offices, online communities, television programmes and almost anything else people experience together.

Being part of those bubbles can give us a sense of connection, while noticing one that we’re outside of can create the feeling that we’re missing something. Once you’ve felt uncomfortable being outside of something before, it makes sense that you may become more interested in avoiding the same feeling when another opportunity comes along.

Is FOMO Really the Fear of Being Left Out?

There’s some interesting research that fits closely with this idea. A study published in 2025 looked at FOMO across seven experiments involving more than 5,000 participants and found that people experienced greater FOMO when they missed events involving social groups they valued, particularly when the event gave the group an opportunity to bond.

One of the interesting findings was that FOMO could still happen when the missed social event wasn’t expected to be particularly enjoyable. Somebody could therefore know an event probably wouldn’t have been brilliant and still feel uncomfortable about missing it because their friends were there together, creating another shared experience without them.

That makes sense when you think about what often happens after an event. People remember what somebody said, a joke starts that you don’t understand, photographs get shared and the experience becomes another small piece of history between the people who were there. You may know rationally that missing one event probably won’t change your friendships, while another part of you still feels uncomfortable knowing everybody had that moment together without you.

For somebody who already worries about fitting in, being forgotten or where they stand with other people, that feeling can become even more noticeable. Sitting in a conversation where everybody knows what happened except you can create social discomfort, and somebody who already experiences social anxiety may find themselves thinking much more about what their absence means.

Why Do We Want to Do What Everyone Else Is Doing?

People often describe following trends as being a sheep, although I think that explanation misses quite a lot of what’s happening. We naturally influence one another, and doing something other people are doing can give us common ground with them, which can make joining in feel socially useful as well as enjoyable.

A television programme can suddenly seem more interesting when everyone you know is watching it because watching it now gives you access to the conversation as well as the programme. The same can happen when an artist becomes huge, a restaurant becomes popular or an event seems to be everywhere, because the experience starts carrying something beyond whatever you’re buying, watching or attending.

You may genuinely discover something you love because other people introduced you to it, which is one of the good things about shared interests. FOMO becomes more noticeable when you’re mainly joining in because being outside of what everybody else is doing feels uncomfortable, particularly when you’d probably make a different choice if nobody else knew about it.

Why Do Shared Experiences Matter So Much?

A lot of our relationships are made from ordinary experiences that become shared memories over time. Friends remember trips they took together, families repeat the same stories for years and colleagues can become closer through things that happened at work, with those experiences giving people a history they can return to whenever they’re together.

This is one reason a concert, holiday or night out can feel like more than a few hours somewhere. You’re also creating something you’ll probably talk about later, and knowing other people are creating that without you can make missing the experience feel more important than it would if everybody had gone separately.

It also explains why FOMO can appear around things you weren’t particularly interested in beforehand. You may not desperately want to stand in a packed venue for several hours, spend £100 on a night out or watch ten episodes of something over a weekend, but you may want the social part that comes with being able to say you were there or knowing what everybody’s talking about.

Why Can FOMO Feel Different in Your 20s and 30s?

Your twenties and thirties can make FOMO complicated because people who once seemed to be living fairly similar lives can start moving in completely different directions. One friend is travelling, another is getting married, somebody’s building a career, another person seems to be out every weekend and somebody else is disappearing into family life, while you’re trying to work out which parts of any of that you actually want for yourself.

Your time and money can also become harder to spread across everything available to you. You may want to see your friends while also needing a weekend to yourself, want the holiday while trying to save money, or want to attend the event while knowing you’ve already spent the week feeling mentally drained. Saying yes to one thing increasingly means saying no to something else.

FOMO can appear in the gap between those choices because knowing you made the sensible decision doesn’t stop you wondering what you missed. You can be glad you saved £200 by staying home and still feel something when the group chat starts filling with photographs, just as you can enjoy a quiet weekend and still wonder whether everybody else somehow made better use of theirs.

Research on age and FOMO isn’t completely straightforward, either. Some studies have found higher FOMO among younger people, while other research comparing different age groups hasn’t found the same clear generational difference, so I wouldn’t treat FOMO as something that belongs to one particular age. The situations creating it can change as we get older, though, and the choices around friendships, money, relationships, work and how we spend our limited time can give it plenty of opportunities to appear.

Why Does It Feel Like Something Is Missing?

Even when life’s going reasonably well, you can still want more from it. You might want more friends, more experiences, more excitement, a better social life or just the feeling that something interesting is happening, which can make whatever everybody else is doing look like the missing piece for a moment.

The world gives us endless meeting points where that feeling can attach itself. There’s always another event happening, another place people are visiting, another programme everybody’s discussing, another group doing something together and another experience you could theoretically be having instead of the one you’re having now.

When something already feels slightly absent from your own life, FOMO can make whatever’s happening elsewhere look particularly important. Somebody feeling lonely may pay more attention to groups of friends doing things together, while somebody bored with their routine may notice every event, holiday or spontaneous plan that seems more exciting than another normal week.

That doesn’t tell you that you need to copy whatever you’re seeing, although the feeling may still contain useful information. If the same type of FOMO keeps appearing, it can be worth noticing whether you genuinely want more connection, novelty, friendship or experience in your own life rather than assuming you need the exact thing everybody else has.

Why Does Social Media Make FOMO Worse?

Social media gives FOMO much more material to work with because you no longer need to hear about something afterwards. You can watch it happening while you’re sitting somewhere else, then see another person post it, another angle appear and the same event continue across different stories until something you weren’t thinking about an hour ago feels like the centre of the world.

It also increases the number of social bubbles you can see at once. Before social media, you might have known what your immediate friends were doing, whereas now you can see former colleagues, people from school, acquaintances, influencers and people you haven’t spoken to for years all doing different things on the same evening.

I’ve written separately about how the content we consume can affect our mental health, so I won’t repeat that wider discussion here. For this article, the important part is that social media makes us much more aware of all the places we’re not, which gives the fear of being the one who misses out far more opportunities to appear.

Can FOMO Make You Feel Anxious?

FOMO can sit alongside anxiety because uncertainty gives your mind plenty to think about. You might wonder whether people had a better time without you, whether you should’ve gone, whether you’re becoming less connected to the group or whether missing this experience means you’ll feel left out the next time everybody talks about it.

For somebody with social anxiety, those thoughts can become particularly uncomfortable because they can connect with existing worries about belonging, judgement or being accepted by other people. A fairly ordinary situation such as missing a gathering can then become something you spend much more time thinking about afterwards, even when nobody else has treated your absence as important.

Research has also connected FOMO with belonging and concerns around social exclusion, although experiencing FOMO doesn’t automatically mean somebody has an anxiety disorder or a serious problem with their relationships. Sometimes you wanted to be somewhere and you’re disappointed that you missed it, which is a normal feeling that doesn’t need a bigger psychological explanation every time it happens.

Does FOMO Mean You Actually Wanted to Go?

One of the most useful questions you can ask when FOMO appears is whether you actually wanted the experience before you knew everybody else was having it. You might have turned down a night out because you were tired and genuinely wanted to stay home, then found yourself questioning that decision once you saw everybody together.

The answer won’t always be obvious because both things can exist at once. You can want to stay home and wish you were there, just as you can know an event isn’t worth the money while still wanting the memory everybody else will have afterwards. Human decisions aren’t always clean enough for one feeling to completely cancel out another.

Looking at what specifically bothers you can still tell you something useful. If you’re disappointed because you love the artist and genuinely wanted to see them, you probably wanted the experience, whereas feeling mostly uncomfortable because everybody else went may tell you that the social side of missing out is carrying more weight.

Can FOMO Make You Say Yes to Too Much?

Fear of missing out can make saying no harder because every invitation carries the possibility that this will be the night, trip or event you regret missing. When enough of those decisions stack up, you can end up spending money you wanted to save, filling weekends you needed for yourself or agreeing to things you’re not particularly interested in because staying outside of them feels worse.

That can become tiring in your twenties and thirties when work, relationships, money, family, friendships and your own mental health are already competing for time. Trying to be present for everything can leave you with very little time to notice whether you’re actually enjoying the life you’re filling up.

You’re going to miss things regardless of how organised, social or spontaneous you are because there will always be more happening than one person can realistically experience. The more useful part is working out which things matter enough to you that missing them would genuinely bother you, rather than treating every opportunity as though it carries the same value.

How Do You Deal With FOMO?

I think dealing with FOMO starts with noticing what you’re actually afraid of missing. Sometimes you genuinely want the experience, while other times you want the connection, the memory, the feeling of being included or the reassurance that you’re still part of what everybody else is doing.

A few questions can help you separate those things when you notice FOMO appearing

• Did I want this before I knew everybody else was doing it?
• Am I disappointed about the experience or about being the one who wasn’t there?
• Do I feel left out, or did I make a choice that still makes sense for me?
• Is this pointing towards something I genuinely want more of in my own life?
• Would I still want to do this if nobody else knew I’d done it?
• Am I saying yes because I want to go, or because saying no feels uncomfortable?
• Will missing this realistically change my relationship with these people?

You won’t always talk yourself out of FOMO, and I don’t think that needs to be the goal. Feeling disappointed about missing something can tell you that an experience, relationship or part of your life matters to you, while noticing why it matters gives you more information than automatically following the feeling.

You Can’t Be Part of Everything

There will always be something happening somewhere else. Somebody will be at a concert while you’re at home, another group will be travelling while you’re working and people will continue finding new things to gather around because sharing experiences is part of how we connect with one another.

You’ll probably still get FOMO occasionally even when you’re happy with your life because knowing you’ve missed something can feel uncomfortable, particularly when people you care about experienced it together. Understanding that feeling can help you separate wanting an experience from fearing being the person who wasn’t part of it.

The next time everybody seems to be doing something without you, it may be worth asking what you actually feel you’re missing. Sometimes the answer will genuinely be the event, while at other times it may be connection, belonging, excitement or the feeling of being part of something, and knowing the difference can help you decide what you actually want to do next.

FAQ

What Does FOMO Mean?

FOMO means fear of missing out and describes the uneasy feeling that other people may be having enjoyable, rewarding or socially important experiences that you’re absent from. It can happen around social events, friendships, entertainment, travel, opportunities and many other parts of life.

Why Do I Get FOMO?

FOMO can involve several things, including wanting an experience, comparing your options with what other people are doing and worrying about missing opportunities to connect with people you value. Research also suggests that belonging and concerns about missed social bonding can play an important part in the feeling.

Why Do I Get FOMO Even When I Don’t Want to Go?

You can have FOMO about something you wouldn’t particularly enjoy because the feeling may involve missing the shared experience rather than only missing the event. Knowing your friends are spending time together, creating memories or becoming closer can still feel uncomfortable even when staying home was the right choice for you.

Is FOMO a Form of Anxiety?

FOMO can involve anxious thoughts and feelings, although experiencing FOMO doesn’t mean somebody has an anxiety disorder. It can become more difficult when it connects with existing worries about belonging, rejection, comparison or social situations.

Why Does Social Media Make FOMO Worse?

Social media can increase FOMO because it gives you constant access to experiences happening elsewhere and lets you see them while they’re happening. Instead of knowing about a few things you’ve missed, you can see many different people, places and events within minutes of opening an app.

Can Social Anxiety Make FOMO Worse?

Somebody with social anxiety may spend more time worrying about what missing an event means for how other people see them or where they fit within a group. Missing something can then create additional thoughts about being forgotten, excluded or struggling to join later conversations, although everybody experiences social anxiety and FOMO differently.

How Can I Stop FOMO?

Completely getting rid of FOMO probably isn’t realistic because there will always be experiences you can’t attend or choices you don’t make. Becoming more aware of whether you want the experience itself or mainly fear being left out can help you make decisions based more on what matters to you.

Is FOMO Always Bad?

FOMO can sometimes point towards something you genuinely want more of, such as friendship, connection, new experiences or a more active social life. Paying attention to the reason the feeling keeps appearing can therefore be more useful than treating every moment of FOMO as something you need to get rid of.