{"id":42835,"date":"2013-07-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/new-social-anxiety-fear-of-missing-out\/"},"modified":"2013-07-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T00:00:00","slug":"new-social-anxiety-fear-of-missing-out","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/new-social-anxiety-fear-of-missing-out\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Social Anxiety\u2014Fear of Missing Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you have an uneasy and sometimes all-consuming fear that others are doing something or experiencing something that you&#39;re not? If so, you may be suffering from a form of social anxiety called &quot;FOMO,&quot; or the Fear of Missing Out. The term, first identified by marketers in the mid-&#39;90s, refers to the sometimes energizing, sometimes terrifying anxiety that you are missing out on something absolutely terrific. It could be a party, a new movie, a special relationship (a spouse, a child, a friend, or a grandchild), or a delicious romantic dinner.<\/p>\n\n<p>FOMO is an age-old problem that has accelerated thanks to real-time digital-updates and the smartphone. Social media expert Marc A. Smith explained it this way: &quot;Those who used to dine behind thick stone walls and had caviar now do so, Tweet about it, and can be seen by those sitting down to dinner at Chipotle&#39;s.&quot; In <em class=\"citation\">The New York Times<\/em> Jenna Wortham wrote about a friend who works in advertising who told her that she felt fine about her life&mdash;until she opened Facebook. The friend said, &quot;Then I&#39;m thinking, I am 28, with three roommates, and, oh, it looks like they have a precious baby and a mortgage. And then I [wanted to] die.&quot; Wortham claims that social media updates can make our simple domestic pleasures pale in comparison with all the fun things we <em>could<\/em> or <em>should<\/em> be doing.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[446],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3422,3683,3726,3796,3874,3977,4254,4291,4383,4792,5129],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-42835","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-anxiety","tax_ctp_tags-contentment","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-discontent","tax_ctp_tags-envy","tax_ctp_tags-fear-of-death","tax_ctp_tags-insecurity","tax_ctp_tags-jealousy","tax_ctp_tags-loneliness","tax_ctp_tags-relationship","tax_ctp_tags-technology"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The New Social Anxiety\u2014Fear of Missing Out - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/new-social-anxiety-fear-of-missing-out\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The New Social Anxiety\u2014Fear of Missing Out - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you have an uneasy and sometimes all-consuming fear that others are doing something or experiencing something that you&#039;re not? 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