It’s called Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), and it‘s really not good for your kids

BEING a teenager is often synonymous with insecurity, but envying other people’s “perfect” lives on Facebook and Instagram takes it to a whole level, writes Alexandra Carlton

There are always a million things going on that you can’t get to — as a quick browse of social media often reveals. Picture: trunkarchive.com

IN January this year almost 1000 Sydneysiders queued for six hours in 38C heat for a chance to get their teeth into a one-day-only pop-up burger shop.

It wasn’t about the actual burger, of course — Sydney only has about 287,138 other places to get a really great burger on any given day already.

It was about the experience. The event. The theatre. And a chance to show everyone you know on social media that You Were There.

Most of us live with the niggling suspicion that everyone else is living a cooler life than our own, but social media makes sure you never forget it, bombarding us with images of other people’s joyful, exciting and connected existences 24/7.

Adults tend to be less susceptible to its seductions, partly because they grew up in a time before social media and so still have a good grip on the idea that life exists beyond a small screen, and partly because they just don’t care that much.

But kids and young adults, already going through the sort of hormonal and life changes that breed insecurity, can become entirely governed by the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO for the uncool uninitiated) that social media puts at our fingertips.

Recently, the Australian Psychological Society conducted research into the effects of social media on wellbeing — with a particular emphasis on teenagers — and came up with some startling figures.

They found teens who were heavy users of social media reported high levels of FOMO.

More than half the teens surveyed said they feared their friends were having more rewarding social experiences than them and almost two in three said they worried when they found out their friends were having fun without them and were bothered when they missed out on a planned get-together.

Fee-fi-FOMO-fum

So what’s so bad about teens having FOMO, seeing as they already had a version of it pre-social media anyway?

Quite a bit, says parenting expert Anna Partridge from annapartridge.com. “They’re struggling,” she says.

“Anxiety and depression have increased because of their need to be more ‘in the group’ than we did.”

Lily, a mother of two teenage boys from Sydney, says she constantly worries about how heavy social media use affects her kids.

“The 16-year-old spends every day at the gym,” she groans.

She’s checked out his social feed and notices that lots of his friends look tanned and buff but are noticeably less so in real life. “It’s amazing what you can do with a filter,” she says.

Another mum, Catherine, says she’s shocked by how long much time her 15-year-old daughter spends mocking up glamorous images of herself sitting by the pool in a bikini sipping an icy drink with her towel and headphones draped around her.

“I know she’s trying to compete with the models and ‘cool girls’ in her Instagram feed,” Catherine says.

“I tell her to remember that their dog is probably weeing on the plants just out of shot, just like hers is.”

Reality bites

So how can you help your kids learn to keep boundaries between real life and online life — and understand the unreality of the latter?

Partridge has two top pieces of advice. For one, get your kids interested in something beyond socialising on a screen.

“Going to the shops with friends, getting a job, doing a sport, it doesn’t matter what it is as long as they love it,” she says.

Then, Partridge says, help them find their true community online and compare their lives with people who they could see themselves being friends with in their real life.

“The girls I talk to say they’d never be friends with the girls they follow on social media,” she says.

“They’re going to the cool girls’ sites, rather than finding their own tribe who might be into reading Harry Potter books or whatever.”

She encourages parents to tell their kids to find their real tribe online and then see if their lives really look so inadequate.

“If they wouldn’t be your real friend in real life, delete them,” she says.

Lily regularly wrenches her two teenage boys off the screen and gets them involved with charity work, even forcing the older one to get a job and save up to go to India to work on a community project.

“I want to help him understand that there might just be other things to think about other than his biceps,” she says.

“Of course it only worked for a while before he got sucked in to it all again.”

But that’s OK, Partridge says.

“I think what that mum’s doing is brilliant,” she comments.

“She’s developing their values and shaping their view of the world outside of social media.”

Meanwhile, set some standards yourself. Your house doesn’t need to have a photogenic vignette in every corner.

That Airbnb tree house would make a gorgeous picture but bear in mind if you stay in it, it will probably also have spiders.

Oh, and sloppy American fast-food burgers?

They actually make pretty grotty photos. Just put the camera away and eat it already.

Stop being part of the problem

NEWSFLASH: If a tree falls in the forest and no one uploads a picture of it on to Instagram, it still bloody well fell down. You don’t have to record every experience in your life to prove that it happened.

Break your addiction to tending to your online life before your real life by implementing “phone bans” — and yes, that even includes holidays, nature walks and brunch trips, and other temptingly Instagrammable opportunities.

Take a still, quiet moment to appreciate a beautiful flower … without whipping out your camera to cram its image into a square frame.

Enjoy a stack of pancakes without tormenting yourself with how well the syrup would glisten using the Juno filter.

It’s good for your soul and an even better example for your kids.