The fear of missing out wasn't invented by Facebook, as you rightly point out. It's a phenomenon of childhood, experienced at the point where independent identity is just barely becoming possible, and the limitations of what one can do with the autonomy one has begun to imagine strike, as they struck you, with near-traumatic emotional force. Regressing you into that childish condition is part of how social media "sticks."

Everything else you have to say is equally insightful. You don't quite put the pieces together, which is what the next draft can improve. But you see the environment clearly, and understand why, for everyone around you, other modes of communication would be better than the choices to which people now flock.

Perhaps you'd like to take a stab at explaining what would be good for people. We can fashion the technology to suit our needs, if we can explain to one another what those needs are. We don't need large accumulations of money or (electric) power to make whatever we want; that's the lesson of free software, without which even these immense platform companies couldn't make what they want. Perhaps you'd like to explain how your sisters could be led to see social media influencer as not a good path in life, just as playing schoolyard basketball to reach the NBA is not a good reason for eschewing schoolwork. Maybe your father is part of the reason that your sister is right that "Facebook is for old people." Maybe you want to explain why email would work better at holding family together.

But I think the most useful path of all might be to think about the form of time that social media imposes. These are technologies built to encourage you to "engage" with them for as much time as possible. To the extent that they work, you have less time for everything else. The meaning of "now" is altered, because what is in the phone is always more "now" than whatever it is interrupting. I've been using email in daily life for more than half a century. Its purpose is to allow thoughtful asynchronous communication that can be as brisk or as thorough as needed, on whatever schedule my own physical and mental life makes best for me. I can't imagine why I would ever want to see email in the street, or while on an elevator. So why would I arrange my technology to be able to do that, or the more demotic equivalent, especially if by doing so I was blowing my own privacy and security by using sensor-heavy hardware and unfree software? Because I make this unfamiliar and archaic judgments, my time is different from your time: there is more of it, and it is more my own. That's a phenomenon you might want to think about in revising this very interesting and promising draft.

The Fear of Missing Out

-- By SalvadorRosas - 11 Oct 2019

My own FOMO

Social Media Habits

FOMO on Responsibilities

I have become really bad about checking my e-mails. There have been several instances in the last few months where I have missed important e-mails and did not reply at all. I will receive anywhere from 100-200 e-mails on any given day. At this point, I usually just mark them all as unread and only answer to the e-mails that have subject lines or senders that stand out.

Admittedly, I am the most productive on my laptop when I am sitting through a lecture. I am able to catch up on e-mails and work for other class. However, I find that I end up even more behind since I am not able to fully focus on either task.

My family's FOMO

My Sisters' Habits

Relatives

My Father

My Mother