“Can you like this for me?” my friend asked, linking me to a picture of her and her boyfriend.
I ‘liked’ the picture without a second thought. I even added heart emojis in a comment as extra reassurance.
I obliged her request without any questions because I experienced similar feelings before. Every time I posted a picture or status to the public eye of Facebook, I always had someone I trusted to review the context of the post. Was this alright? It wasn’t too weird, right? Then after posting I would wait for responses to flow in. There was an irrational nudging at the back of my mind saying that if my post didn’t receive a certain amount of attention, it meant that my online presence, a part of me, was invalid. I wanted to matter.
Many millennials experience the anxiousness of social media enough to the point that there is a term coined for it: “FOMO.” The term “FOMO” stands for the Fear of Missing Out. It is a “social angst” that describes how one feels like they may miss out on social interactions or satisfying events when they are away from the Internet. The result of this concern is that we constantly check up on our friends and news through social media. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. We must not let anything slip through as we do not want to be left behind.
According to an email from the Odyssey’s Editorial Team, roughly 1,000 posts could appear on a person’s Facebook timeline every day. However, only 250 posts actually appear. Many of the posts have been thoroughly examined both inside and out to perfectly project their intended messages. Though we dictate and analyze every detail of our posts’ contexts, our fixation and nervousness causes us to believe that the responses to our posts reflect our worth.
The numbers of ‘likes’ or comments do not dictate anything about our personal selves. This concept is similar how to other numbers, such as grade point average and weight, do not offer insight on a person’s character. But then why do we care so much about it? For one thing, social media is a big part of the millennial generation and it allows us to project a desired image of ourselves. More attention for our posts equals: more affirmation on our amiability, opinions, and popularity. This all adds up to how much we matter. We want to matter.
Joining the Odyssey helped me get over social media anxiety. Every week with the publication of an article, I had to create a post about it on Facebook. At first I disliked doing it because I tended to not post anything to my wall to avoid feeling anxious. Questions swam around. What if people think that my articles are weird? That I'm weird? Though over time I grew accustomed to posting due to weekly repetitions. It now induces little anxiety to type up a curiosity piquing post for my articles. I probably won’t start posting more on my wall, but I am glad that I shook off the uneasiness.
