'Fear of missing out' is a fact of life, so let's learn to accept it

You know, it’s OK if you don’t actually want to go out,” my friend told me via FaceTime while I begrudgingly highlighted my cheekbones. That night, I didn’t have to study, and I didn’t really have to catch up on sleep. I didn’t have any excuse not to go out, so I felt like I had to. I felt like I should want to. My friend is a recent graduate so I assume she must have forgotten about that inner conflict we all get when we consider going out or staying in. The former always wins. I reminded her why: College is only four years! I don’t have much longer to buy $5 triples! We’re all going to graduate and have to be adults soon!

I told her the most compelling reason I had to go out that night was the unavoidable FOMO I would experience if I didn’t.

FOMO, or fear of missing out, is nothing new. I can picture paleolithic people staying back to gather berries while wondering if they should have gone hunting instead. With the rise and reign of social media, the phenomenon gained some serious traction. We no longer had to wonder what was going on where we weren’t — we had to watch it on every platform in real time. From then on, it was no longer the fear of missing out, but the certainty of it.

As millennial overachievers (and typical UF students) we have upped the ante. FOMO is gone, and the inevitable fear of FOMO has taken its place. Basically, we’re screwed.

Without even noticing, we’re chipping off flakes of our own free will every time we drag ourselves to places that we actually don’t want to go. We’re choosing to do something because we fear the potential fear of missing out, and we’re letting that drive us more than our own desire to do or not do something.

I love a vodka soda just as much as the next girl, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be telling my grandchildren about that one Thursday night I spent pushing through a sea of people in wedges I regret wearing. I don’t know if there are any of us who can say that every night spent at Midtown is one for the books. Still, though, when I think about staying home and watching people have fun on a phone screen, I wonder if skipping out is worth the risk.

Potential FOMO is luring us into bars, clubs and parties more than any drink special ever could. And it doesn’t stop there: it’s pulling us to fill out applications for organizations, go to informational sessions and buy tickets for events. Just last week, it brought all of us out to stand in suits in the sun waiting for the chance to hand out the business cards we’d printed the night before. Was that actually because we all thought we’d leave with jobs? Or was it because we knew if we didn’t go, we might regret it? That’s a risk we just weren’t willing to take.

Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that we’re all trying to make the most of our time in college. We’ve always been told that these would be the best four years of our lives, and it’s admirable that we’re trying to make that true. But we can’t do everything, and we’ll waste our supposedly precious time trying.

The thing about potential FOMO is that it’s unavoidable. It’s impossible not to miss out on something when you decide to do anything. The sooner we accept that we can’t do it all, the sooner we can start making decisions based on (get this) what will make us happy.

Carly Breit is a UF journalism senior. Her column appears on Wednesdays.