SOCIAL MEDIA IS GIVING ME MAJOR ‘FOMO’ (& I DON’T LIKE IT)
FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out. Sound familiar?
I’m having a real love / hate relationship with social media at the moment and have done for a while.
On the one hand, there are moments when I absolutely adore it. I’ve met some wonderful people through my channels, been inspired, found fantastic reads, watched things that have made me howl with laughter and gained new friends.
But with the good bits, comes a darker side. And this is where I’m really beginning to struggle…
You know what it’s like. You’re not having the easiest or perhaps the most exciting of days and you hop onto Facebook or have a quick scroll through Instagram and before you know it, the bombardment of people’s posts and images, can very quickly leave you feeling flat. Fed up. Deflated. Or occasionally far worse.
We all know (or should at least be aware) that what we see is mostly carefully curated images or snapshots of people’s lives. And as a blogger and influencer, I’m probably in a better position than most to understand how people’s lives aren’t always so glossy or attractive to gaze at, as they may perhaps seem. But yet, even knowing this, I too can and have fallen prey to other people’s gloss and glamour, excitement and success and allowed them to kick my life into a paler and lesser comparison.
For everyone, social media can be damaging at times. Time wasting at best, destructive, demoralising and depressing at worst. But as a blogger and as someone who needs to be on social media a lot, in order to keep my business and career going, let me tell you, it can be brutal.
Every day I log on and scroll through my various feeds to discover that many people I know (and indeed admire and respect) are doing incredible stuff in our blogging / influencing arena.
Bloggers that I have known for years are achieving stuff that we could all have only dreamed of years ago! Their beautiful faces are plastered across billboards, many are modelling for incredible fashion brands, some are writing books (yes, me included) or appearing on TV, others are popping up in monthly glossies and all of them achieving things of wonder and greatness in one way or another. Dreams are being fulfilled, careers are being made and the world is their oyster.
It’s magnificent and incredibly inspiring to behold, but whilst genuinely, hand on heart, I could not be happier for them, seeing a constant drip feed of success also gives me the biggest and unhealthiest daily dose of FOMO and here is where my problem with social media lies.
Because I do that absolutely dreadful thing that I know I shouldn’t do, that I try and forbid myself to do and, I compare my success. It’s pathetic and damaging but sometimes, for reasons I’ve yet to understand, I just cannot stop myself. Particularly on those days when my notion of ‘success’ is managing to grab a shower, get Elsie to school and keep Leo alive.
On these days when life feels like a bit of a struggle, I look at people’s Instagram numbers ramp ahead into the tens of thousands and then I look at my numbers in dismay and I feel like a failure.
When I scroll through Instagram stories and see many of my peers attend another exciting event in London that I’ve had to turn down yet again because I have Leo to look after and no one to pick Elsie up from school, I can only sigh with frustration that I’m not there too.
Social media is beginning to make me feel like I’m on a never ending race track where I’m being continually lapped by everyone else who seems to have their s**t together much better than I do.
And I don’t like it.
My lifestyle is the way it is because I’ve made these choices and in the main I’m happy with them. But staying at home with Leo and trying to cram in some work when he naps or in the evenings, means I often get very little done and this is when I find my FOMO kicks in at its worst. Because on the days when I feel like I’ve achieved a bit fat nothing, I hop online and within a few minutes, end up coming off feeling rubbish and like a blogging failure.
It is both ridiculous and pathetic, I know. But this at the moment is how I’m feeling.
Yesterday I had a moment when I seriously considered deleting all of my social media accounts, once and for all. I pondered whether or not I could survive without them and decided that personally I absolutely could (indeed I think saying goodbye to them would be refreshing) but reasoned that my blog and businesses couldn’t.
And so here I am, stuck in some weird kind of social media limbo land, torn between loving it and hating it. Some days actively and enjoyably participating, others days wanting it all to go away and disappear.
Social media is a necessity for my survival in the online world as a self employed woman and blogger. There’s no getting away from that.
The question is now…how on earth do I make it work better for me, so that it only makes me feel good and doesn’t leave me feeling like I’m missing out on life, when in reality I’m just far too busy living.
Yes girl. A thousand times yes.
I know the feeling all too well. I took the decision a while back to stop caring so much about my numbers (I don’t need to monetise so it was all for ego, really) and to care less about what other people are up to (although I do keep an eye on the Instagram follow/unfollow brigade and make vigorous use of the ‘block’ function).
FOMO is a powerful (de)motivator. I love being part of the ‘community’ and, as someone who doesn’t do any events other than 2-3 conferences a year, social media is the only way I can keep in touch with people. But I don’t always like what I see happening with bloggers (back to follow/unfollow again) which is why I don’t always enjoy my feeds as much as I should. Like anything, social media is what it is – some good, some bad – and the old saying about comparison being the thief of joy is very apt here.
Katie, you’ve said yourself that comparing yourself to others doesn’t make you feel good, but any comparison only works when you look at two things like for like. Your career can never be the same as someone else’s because no two lives are ever the same. You’re choosing isolated events in a peer’s SM feed to beat yourself over the head with…is it about the event or your self-esteem just finding something it knows will needle you so you feel bad? If you felt the value of all your wonderful achievements (of which you have many) you wouldn’t really care a jot about what anyone else is getting up to.
I’ve read many of your posts that measure your success by how loving and happy your family unit is, how lucky you are to be doing the career you love, and the opportunities that have come your way over the last decade or so. Just try and find that feeling again because nothing has changed. You’re still an inspiration to many women. You choose to bare your soul where others would be too afraid, in case it ruined the Insta impression they’re trying to portray. You get to go to fabulous places, review brand-new products and spend your days telling the world what YOU think – to loyal audiences who love to hear this. Someone sat in a dead-end job, and there are many, would chew their arm off to do what you do and get paid for it – never undervalue it.
So some other bloggers are going to conferences: overrated, busy, claustrophobic and never as good as I imagine, personally speaking. They’re on the telly: you’re a powerhouse on the web to your tribe. They have more followers: they can’t possibly have the level of intimacy and ongoing relationships with each one like you do – authenticity vs. number-crunching.
There’s no order to achievements in life and what constitutes success is different for everyone. Your honesty and the way you personally inspire women in particular makes you unique. If I was a fellow blogger I’d ache to have that effect on people.
Remember your worth, my sweet.
I understand this feeling well, Katie. At the start of the year, I unconsciously decided to stop using instagram – I’d hop on, here and there, but I rarely posted. I’ve recently returned from a five day digital hiatus (I was lucky enough to go glamping somehwere without signal) and I suddenly love it again. The key for me was setting boundaries. Knowing when I wanted my phone in my hand, or when I wanted to share. The lines are blurred when it’s for an income (which, I don’t have the pressure of) I hope you find your happy balance x