In college, you live with your friends, go to class with your friends, and eat with your friends. You have sorority sisters, fraternity brothers, class friends, work friends, and club friends. You are never without companionship and any activity you have to do alone seems dreadful. Every aspect of your life is shared with your closest friends because they are with you for it all. So, naturally, it is hard to be without these people that have become your family, even if it is just for a little amount of time.
Currently, my best friends and housemates are all getting brunch at Fleetwood, and I can practically smell the Hippie Hash, but I am at the library because I have two papers and a presentation due next week. My FOMO (fear of missing out) is very prevalent, and I'm only missing brunch.
In today's society, we are all so interconnected that it is almost impossible to ever completely disconnect, and if you do manage to disconnect, you constantly wonder what you must be missing. If I have to miss a Skeeps Tuesday because I have work in the morning, I often have trouble falling asleep because I'm thinking about all of the shenanigans that I am missing. If I don't look at my phone for a few hours during class I often wake up to 300 message streams, new pictures in the joint photo stream, some ridiculous Snapchat stories, and lots of FOMO. Yes, you can reread messages a few hours later, but often your input is void and unnecessary at this point. It's pretty hard to help out with, or comfort, those late night insecurities when you are the friend that goes to sleep at 10 p.m.
This definitely seems dramatic and excessive in print, but you know you've felt it, too. How many times have you checked your phone four plus times, waiting for updates on a party you've missed, or a Sadako trip you were unable to attend. FOMO is a very real and common phenomenon, but is it possible to escape it? Can we disconnect without the fear?
Let's try something. I am going to turn off my phone and abstain from social media for a five-hour block of time during normal hours, say between 9 a.m. to 12 a.m., every day for the next month and see what happens. I want to see if physically removing myself can actually make a difference for my FOMO problem. It may drastically heighten, or subside completely. This is not a real experiment or test of anything, but I am going to try it. Try it out with me if you want, or don't. It's up to you.
Also, I blame Kim Possible for our generation's excessive communication craving, like "call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me" is not helping my technology dependency.
