A photo illustration of cicadas on an off-white background

The Washington Post

wb-cicadas-autism

For The Washington Post

Illustration of a woman in a garden of many enormous flowers. The woman has picked a simple small flower from the garden and is smiling.

That’ll do — why ‘good enough’ decisions can be healthier for you

An illustration of a brain with varrying patterns from left to right including a regular brain, jagged shapes, dots, lines, and a more saturated colorful brain. 

wb-brainmatters-menopause

As Mother’s Day approaches...How keeping journals for my kids kept my mother’s spirit alive for me

A man died in front of me. A year later, I’m still recovering.

High School Students

Contributor

An illustration of a person cleaning a table with cleaning supplies. Their head is a misshapen technicolored bubble, with smaller bubbles floating around them.

wb-brainmatters chemicals

Some 11 percent of U.S. children have been diagnosed with ADHD

Tabitha Brown In Conversation 

An illustration of a person happily floating under blue water.

wb-brainmatters float tank

How feeling envy helped me in life — mostly

An illustration of a man reading a book on a park bench, smiling. In the background someone is flying a kite, and another person is playing the guitar.

wb-comic-JOMO

ketaminediary

An illustration of a man sitting on a bed, with his back to the screen raising his arms. A sliver of light comes through the door. 

wb-brainmatters-dreamacts

hescan0319

iStock

other

An illustration of a woman lighting a candle in a dark room. Next to her there is also a lantern and a lamp.

wb-onyourmind not everyone needs therapy

Boys struggle with eating disorders. This best-selling author did too.

An illustration of a colorful bird on a branch. Next to it there is an empty bird-shaped hole in the branches, with the moon where the eye of the missing bird would be.

wb-onyourmind-grief

An illustration of a giant spoon holding a pile of colorful pills. A small man stands looking up at it.

wb-brainmatters- deperscribing

An illustration of someone wearing pajamas standing on a stage with a light shining on them. The stage and background are a bed. 

wb-onyourmind-insomnia

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

China’s latest wellness trend? Marathons. But good luck getting a spot.

China’s Xi wades into Europe’s political divides

Middle East conflict live updates: U.N. says roads ‘jammed’ as over 110,000 flee Rafah; cease-fire talks stall

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

Find your Westminster show dog name: You may be a CH Lolly’s Marble Tuxedo MX

What actually happens within your lawn when you don’t mow it

Think you want a dog? Take our quiz to find out if you’re ready.

Carolyn Hax: In-laws stalk the live stream to check couple’s attendance at church

Miss Manners: Why were other diners laughing at us?

I accidentally befriended my ex-husband’s wife. Give advice to this Hax question.

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Checks, not sex, and other takeaways from Trump’s New York hush money trial

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

To get outs with his fastball, Trevor Williams put his ego aside

Nationals finally run out of answers and fall to Orioles in 12 innings

4 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

5 big travel lessons from a Patagonia CEO-turned-conservationist

Cruise worker accused of stabbing 3 with scissors arrested in Alaska

Trump team throws out GOP plan and builds a ‘leaner’ 2024 operation 

Mike Johnson’s telling comment on GOP’s (lack of) voter-fraud evidence 

VA improperly approved nearly $11 million in bonuses for execs, watchdog finds

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

An illustration of a woman dancing inside her apartment by herself, with a cat nearby and fireworks outside the window.

Your friends are probably having fun without you.

For many, this knowledge would trigger a fear of missing out — popularly acronymized as FOMO. But emerging research suggests that missing out need not be something we fear, but something we can enjoy.

For better mental health this year, try reframing those feelings of FOMO and instead, try finding JOMO — the joy of missing out.

“JOMO reminds us that we can not only not fear that we are missing something important, but actually enjoy missing something,” said <a href="https://is.biu.ac.il/en/node/2625" target=_blank>Tali Gazit</a>, an associate professor of information science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.

The research into JOMO is nascent and focuses on the effects of social media. But we can find JOMO in the rest of our lives, too, by choosing when we want to step away. JOMO can feel rejuvenating because it helps us stop being preoccupied with other people.

“JOMO is actually being able to be in the here and now,” Gazit said. “To be able to enjoy what you are doing now without looking left and right and be jealous or anxious about missing something.”

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/well-being/?method=SURL&location=ART&initiative=CONTEXT" target=_blank>Sign up for the Well+Being newsletter</a>, your source of expert advice to help you live well.

FOMO — a human condition exacerbated by social media

The fear embodied in FOMO is a social one. Humans have dealt with it since we realized that there were opportunities being missed, fun not being had and Joneses needing to be kept up with. But the rise of social media meant that FOMO arose in public consciousness and vocabulary.

“FOMO existed before social media did, but it just wasn’t such a salient part of our experience,” said <a href="https://psychology.wsu.edu/people/faculty/chris-barry/" target=_blank>Chris Barry</a>, a psychology professor at Washington State University.

With the advent of social media, we were granted the profound ability to constantly see the highlight reel of everyone’s life — and all the possibilities for self-comparison. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0033294120980970" target=_blank>Research shows</a> that higher levels of FOMO are associated with lower self-esteem, lower life satisfaction and more loneliness.

“We’re exposed to more people that we don’t know, we don’t really know their stories,” Gazit said. “We are not familiar with the complexity of their lives, and everything looks so great in others’ life experiences.”

How a social media outage brought joy

Oct. 4, 2021, is not a day that will live in infamy. But for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/04/facebook-instagram-down-outage/" target=_blank>several hours</a>, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp went down, disrupting the lives of billions of people.

The outage also served as a serendipitous natural experiment on how people emotionally respond to being away from social media. Most studies rely on requesting and trusting people to abstain from their smartphones and computers. The outage was annoying for users, but for researchers interested in human behavior, “we got it as a present,” Gazit said.

In the two days following the outage, Gazit and her graduate student Tal Eitan recruited 571 adults to answer a questionnaire assessing their feelings about the experience.

Initially, the researchers expected to uncover feelings of stress and FOMO, which they did indeed find in spades. In support of previous research, FOMO was significantly correlated to stress felt and the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-019-00344-4" target=_blank>level of social media usage</a> people normally had.

But unexpectedly, in the optional open-ended questions, many people wrote about the relief and joy they felt not being connected to social media and the goings-on of others, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222002941" target=_blank>2023 study</a> reported.

Some even directly referenced JOMO, which has cropped up in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/07/instead-fomo-covid-19-demands-we-embrace-jomo-joy-missing-out/" target="_blank">popular culture</a> but has not been rigorously studied until recently.

“A large amount of people really enjoyed themselves, and they found themselves talking to their partners, talking to their friends and doing things, cooking, doing sports,” Gazit said.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/01/09/how-to-adult-friends-relationships/" target=_blank>Social connection</a> is healthy, and social media, for its many flaws and foibles, provides a means for connection. JOMO is not about eschewing those connections entirely or self-isolating from others, Barry said. Instead, it is intentionally cultivating periods of disconnection and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/22/how-to-be-alone-with-thoughts/" target=_blank>solitude</a> for recharging and rejuvenation.

Make regular plans to disconnect: The key to true JOMO may be intentionality. The Facebook outage was not expected and still fostered JOMO in some people. But in a forthcoming publication, Gazit found that people who purposefully stepped away from social media had higher psychological well-being compared with those who did not actively decide to, such as being asked to put away their phone in class.

Use coping strategies: To reduce the allure of social media, try protective behavioral strategies — inspired by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6427807/" target=_blank>addiction research</a> — such as turning off notifications, setting limits on certain apps or turning off your device at night, Barry said.

Be mindful when using social media: Cultivating JOMO doesn’t mean a social media detox or complete disconnection from the lives of others. Instead, be more <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joca.12476" target=_blank>mindful</a> of how you use social media and “think through what emotions you’re experiencing as you’re seeing different content and considering what’s beneficial or not,” Barry said.

Be aware when you’re focused on others: “Most of the time we’re just so occupied with others’ lives,” said Gazit, who named her new golden retriever Jomo. Make a conscious effort to set aside time to “be occupied with your own life,” she said.

Remind yourself that everybody misses out on something: The world is too rich, vast and varied for one person to experience in a lifetime, no matter how hard we try not to miss out. Appreciate and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/17/feel-happier-joy-flourishing/" target=_blank>savor the joy</a> in what you are doing, whether with a loved one or by yourself, without thinking about what others may be doing.

Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email <a href="mailto:brainmatters@washpost.com">BrainMatters@washpost.com</a> and we may answer it in a future column.

Sign up for the Well+Being newsletter, your source of expert advice and simple tips to help you live well every day

Johns Hopkins University, PhD in Neuroscience

Harvard University, BA in Neurobiology 

Richard Sima is a neuroscientist turned award-winning science journalist who writes the "Brain Matters" column for The Washington Post's Well+Being desk. 

Richard Sima

Forget FOMO. Embrace JOMO to discover the joy of missing out.

the-washington-post

George Wylesol for The Washington Post

wb-brainmatters-jomo

An illustration of a person dancing alone in their home while fireworks go off outside their window, with the headline: Forget FOMO. Embrace JOMO: The joy of missing out

Illustration by George Wylesol for The Washington Post

Forget FOMO. Embrace JOMO: The joy of missing out

Food

Fitness

Mind

Body

Life

Well+Being

washpost

Well+Being Mind

Well+Being: Mental Health

Stories about mental health, meditation, mindfulness and brain health from The Washington Post’s Well+Being section.

Well+Being from The Washington Post covers healthy living, including nutrition, fitness, mental health, relationships, chronic illness and disability.