Ever since I created the blog in August 2016, I had become  anti-social. I would rather sit at my PC typing away than engage in social visits. Dressing up to attend social events felt as cumbersome as setting up the house and inviting friends over. All I wanted to do was, to spend time with my new-found passion. Fortunately, for my job, I was still meeting people so hadn’t turned into a complete recluse.

Pressure of Social Media

Just as I was wondering if it was normal for me to love my space and not want to socialize so much, I read an article in a local magazine on FOMO and JOMO. Apparently, thanks to Facebook and social media, a lot of people these days suffer from ‘FOMO’ – Fear of Missing Out. They see their friends uploading pictures and they feel left out and depressed that they are not having as much fun. Thankfully for me, I had anything but FOMO! I was absolutely happy sitting at home.

Then there was JOMO which is the ‘Joy Of Missing Out’– when a person is totally content with being on their own, reading a book or watching TV or simply cleaning the house or gardening. Was I relieved? Fortunately, I had JOMO which is a healthy condition and nothing to fret about.

FOMO and JOMO are not the only conditions. There are a whole lot of disorders people suffer these days, on account of social media, mainly among the adoloscent to forties age group. The rest of the age groups that are probably suffering would be the fall-out of being related to this age-group- children, parents, grand-parents.

There’s FOJI– Fear of Joining In because you are not sure if people will like your pictures and then there’s BROMO – Bro Missing Out i.e. friends don’t share pictures with the friend who hasn’t come lest they should feel left out and MOMO– Mystery of Missing Out when you don’t receive notifications and you start frantically checking your account every minute and are wondering if there’s something wrong. The list is endless.

Stress after uploading pictures

For those people who are uploading pictures and are having a great time and do not suffer from any of the above conditions, the pressure begins after the picture is uploaded- pressure of constantly checking the number of likes one gets, the pressure of identifying who liked your post and who did not ( the ones who do not will slowly move down the friendship scale and will have to be remembered so as to not like their picture when it’s uploaded). Now some of the so-called friends are now  ‘haters’ in your imagination because they did not or forgot to like your picture. So out of your 600 friends on fb, now you have friend-enemies. You have become such a narcissist that you have completely forgotten why you added them in the first place on FB- the little chats you’ll shared, the laughs you’ll had are all forgotten and have no place in your life anymore against the one click of a mouse.  Don’t know if they have coined a name for this one though.

To my JOMO friends

Thanks for sharing your pictures. It makes my life so much more entertaining and colorful because I can’t be everywhere at all times and do everything that everybody does but with you uploading pictures, I get to enjoy so many different experiences like the movies. So THANK YOU 🙂

To my FOMO friends

What you do need to understand is that pictures don’t necessarily mean that the person has no problems. It just means that some people believe in sharing their happiness with the rest of the world. It does not mean that they don’t have their own areas of concern. Everybody does. That’s simply the law of the world. So stop sulking, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You can see only what’s shown to you. You can’t see the other side of the coin. Just because you haven’t seen the tears, does not mean they don’t exist.  No one puts pictures 365 days of the year. Don’t judge and be discontent with your life based on pictures put up for 10 or 30 days out of the 365 days. Your friends are working their butts out the rest of the year and are probably struggling with things that you have no clue about. Don’t envy it or feel low that you don’t have a life.

To all the others who have become addicted to social media

It’s a good idea to disconnect for one day in a week or for a month from social media just to ensure you are not addicted- like a detox program. Honestly, that’s when you realize, how much time social media takes away from you- running to check the phone every-time it squeaks, stopping what you are doing to check your phone.

So be it JOMO, FOMO or any other new acronym coined,  take time out and make an attempt to build relations with real people in the real world rather than in a make- believe world of so-called ‘online’ friends, photo-shopped pictures. For those who care or matter are the ones who reach out across the distance and will praise you wholeheartedly when you are good and will  correct you when you are not.

Life’s not about being on your own because while you can be,  humanity involves building relations, giving friends and family some of your time and making the effort and taking the trouble to get out of the couch from the virtual world to make eye-contact and get into some real conversation.

Read someone’s lips,

Wipe a tear,

Listen to what’s not said,

Share a real smile,

Hear the sound of laughter,

Talk long to those who are near,

For the rest truly does not matter.

From the Social Media King:

P.S. If you haven’t had any of the above conditions and are still “Free” (not a slave of social media), then I salute you. Yours is a life worth lived and living! Happy LIVING 🙂