Through various online networks, influencers share their lives in the hopes of drawing large audiences. However, because of the differences in each influencer's lifestyle, aesthetic preferences, or daily routines, viewers frequently shape their own identities according to the multiple curated personas they consume. As individuals accept influencers' romanticised lifestyles as reality, they begin to experience Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). They may envy seeing fancy social gatherings, or an influencer’s ability to maintain low-calorie meals. Viewers are constantly reminded of what they lack, resulting in a greater emotional need to fulfill themselves with what others claim is happiness. When social media users experience a continuous desire to chase a different trend, users are placed into a dopamine loop where they compare themselves against the images available on social media (Goldman et al., 2021). This increase in desire incentivises users to adhere their daily habits, clothing choices, or personal preferences to those prevalent on social media. In doing so, they aim to alleviate the feeling of social exclusion. The constant shifting of users' perceptions of what is “normal” causes disruptions in their identity formation. These disruptions are exacerbated by the prioritizing of external feedback over intrinsic values. This essay contends that social media shapes human behaviour by intensifying FoMO, heightening individuals’ awareness of their perceived social and lifestyle deficiencies, and driving them into a feedback loop of adapting their identities to seek public validation.

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FoMO is defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having a rewarding experience from which one is absent. In 2013, FoMO reportedly affected roughly 56% of internet users in the United States (Bergman, 2024). It is manifested through the fear that others have more rewarding experiences, leading users to feel the need to stay connected to social networks and feeling compelled to report one's own positive experiences in return (Uram & Skalski, 2022). In social media, this looks like the constant visibility of others’ performed identities—from friends posting pictures of vacations, parties, and gatherings to influencers romanticizing expensive products as a self-care method through demonstrating practices like skincare routines. At its core, FoMO is a driving mechanism for people's cravings for connection and social inclusion. Since 1977, psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci's Self-Determination Theory has been used to understand people's psychological needs and how that influences their intrinsic motivation. It characterizes that people have three basic needs––autonomy, competence, and relatedness (O'Hara, 2017). In particular, FoMO exacerbates the perceived lack of relatedness, or social relations, converting traditional face-to-face interactions and emotional intimacy to bursts of communication in short digital messages. The absence of genuine, emotionally resonant relations with others intensifies the feelings of social isolation, encouraging individuals to tailor their identities to mainstream trends and seek external validation. The more individuals suppress their authentic values, beliefs, or aesthetic/style choices, the more they lose their autonomy to make choices according to personal interest rather than social rewards. The tension between authentic preferences and desire to avoid social exclusion creates a sense of powerlessness and disruption of competency. Social media functions as part of a feedback loop, as users equate their sense of accomplishments with the ability to abide by the perceived versions of happiness. Users crave greater emotional connection, sense of accomplishment, and access to social validation while viewing platforms that subconsciously deprive them of contentment. Through the increased usage of social media, these platforms alter an individual's self-determination, leading to distortions around an individual's identity.

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Social media use leads users to begin shifting their identities––in terms of habits, aesthetic styles, and behaviours––to adhere to the mainstream community, an approach that makes them further seek external validation. Identities are conceptualized through the processes by which an individual commits to meaningful life domains (Crocetti & Pichat, 2022). This can be attributed to psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development Theory. The theory explains how a person's identity develops throughout their lifespan by navigating various social environments. According to Erikson's theory, adolescents and young adults are particularly likely to construct their identities through experimentation with different beliefs and affiliations (Orenstein & Lewis, 2022). This process traditionally unfolds in social environments where individuals receive feedback from interpersonal interactions, allowing them to refine their identities based on real-world experiences. Social media distorts Erikson's explanation of identity construction by removing the "trial-and-error" approach individuals employ when socializing in real time. Three primary attributes of social media drive identity formation: the ability for users to present a carefully crafted image, publicly broadcast one's successes to receive affirmations, and the overall increase in smartphone usage that drive users into media consumption. A carefully crafted image can be considered a “personal fable,” or otherwise a curated presentation of the social media users that often emphasizes achievements and omits struggles (David & Roberts, 2024). Identity formation begins through this curation, as the user becomes accustomed to the validation they receive from an imaginary audience––the belief that others are constantly watching and evaluating one's behaviours. This early stage of identity performance feeds the user into habits, styles, and values that embody a popular persona, ingraining deeper into the person's inherent identity as they become accustomed to this portrayal (Crocetti & Pichat, 2022). The greater the usage of social media, the more individuals cultivate an unhealthy reliance on social feedback and pleasing the imaginary audience, resulting in the anticipation of psychological rewards such as likes and comments to reassure themselves of their self worth. This reliance on external validation is otherwise a reflection of FoMO.

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The psychological harms of FoMO contribute to the long-term impairment of an individual's psychological well-being. For instance, those with chronic social media consumption, including long-term intake of events featured on social media, frequently develop a problematic attachment model, depending on validation to regulate their emotions. In this cycle, there are five similarities between symptoms of social media use and addiction: tolerance, withdrawal, relapse, conflict, and mood modification (Altuwairiqi et al., 2019). When individuals build a tolerance to social media, increasing their online presence, withdrawing from a platform in a short period of time equates to heightened levels of anxiety over the inability to connect with the online community and enduring perceived exclusion. Relapse occurs after attempts to abstain from obsessive usage, where users––due to not staying constantly updated on others' statuses––are trapped in conflict, dedicating more time towards social media despite having other priorities. Finally, the feedback loop repeats due to the user's interactions through likes and comments influencing content creators to adjust their content according to user satisfaction. The more of this adjusted content the user consumes, the more likely they are to undergo psychological harms of FoMO, seeing a plethora of alternative ways in which influencers are experiencing happiness. One study confirms this, as the 6.5% of 1000 subjects who reported using social networks excessively were found to have "lower emotional stability and agreeableness, conscientiousness, perceived control and self-esteem," often a root cause for depressive disorders (Sharma & Gupta, 2021, p. 4883). By extension, the addiction to escaping loneliness through social media impairs cognitive abilities like shortened memory retention and attention span, as their focus was accustomed to constant switching between different stimuli on quick networks. Despite this, a report included 15 million internet users who attempted to abstain from social media in 2016, with 33% indicating an increased feeling of productivity, 27% feeling liberated, and the remaining affected by FoMO, a sense of being lost, or neglect (Altuwairiqi et al., 2019). While the argument still stands that social media complicates a user fulfilling their emotional needs, this statistic shows that recovery of self-determination and cognitive functions is feasible. 

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The pervasiveness of social media power in building modern identity has resulted in a self-reinforcing cycle of validation-seeking and fear of exclusion. FoMO is at the forefront of this dynamic. Through continued exposure to masterfully crafted, idealized portraits of other individuals' lives, people experience mounting feelings of inadequacy and the compulsive need to mold their behaviors toward mainstream standards so that they feel a sense of belonging. Social media shifts the balance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness towards external dependency and a lesser self-actualization. The psychological harms of FoMO, including anxiety, perceived loneliness, and impaired cognitive functioning, indicate the long-term effects of this phenomenon on mental health. While the addictive nature of social media and its impact on psychological well-being may be difficult to overcome, the hope for healing through intentional disengagement promises to reclaim one's identity as revealed by over half the internet users reportedly experiencing positive emotions from abstaining from media platforms. As social media continues to ubiquitously impact modern experiences, it is becoming increasingly necessary for individuals and communities to moderate online engagement in an effort to safeguard their well-being and mental health.