’tworryaboutmissing out

This expectation is usually felt during the teenage years because of societal pressure — teens are expected to maintain exemplary grades but have an abundant social life that keeps them busy every weekend with no time to relax.

This can produce stress, anxiety, depression and burnout, which ultimately lead to the feeling of missing out even more. Time Magazine addresses the problem with the fear of missing out (FOMO) and explains that “When you’re so tuned in to the ‘other,’ or the ‘better’ (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self.” Time said, “This constant fear of missing out means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.”

Though it is understandable people feel this way because of society’s depiction of the perfect high school experience within the media, when you think about it, society knows nothing.

There’s no exact way or instruction manual of how to go through high school or life itself, but the most exciting way I’ve found is to not care about what other people think.

Once you start to not be bothered with what others believe or say, you begin to slowly, unconsciously shift your mindset from constantly worrying about everything you’re missing out on to enjoying the place you are in at that moment.

So never let someone pressure or guilt trip you into believing you are wasting away the “best years of your life” because your mental health is more important than dragging yourself to a party and staying out til 2 a.m.

How To Overcome Fomo

1. Realize you might not actually be missing out. “A lot of what we do on social media is exaggerated to make our lives seem a lot better,” John Grohol said. Social media is not a direct reflection of our lives — it’s not realistic, so we shouldn’t feel bad for not living up to it.

2. Avoid over-using social media. Because social media shows a distorted view of our lives, it can often be the root of FOMO. Staying off social media can help a lot in letting you focus on what you’re doing instead of the glamorized life of people on Instagram.

3. Don’t be so hard on yourself for staying in. All of us need a break sometimes — time to recharge our social batteries and accomplish other tasks. You shouldn’t feel bad turning down an invitation or feel obligated to go out with your friends just out of fear of missing out.

4. Host a party or plan a group outing. Organizing the event ensures you will be in on the fun, but it also means you can prioritize spending time with your friends and making sure they have fun, too.

5. Be OK with not being able to do it all. There are only 24 hours in a day, so there is never going to be enough time to do everything. It’s important to prioritize what you are able to do and what you have time for, and not worry about what doesn’t fit into your schedule.

design by andrew sharber

From being both a twin and the youngest of my household (by just 14 minutes), I find that being a sibling is often both a blessing and a curse; because while I might disagree with them on certain things I also know that I wouldn’t be where I am without having their help from problems that they have already been through.

One stigma that’s in many households is how older siblings get more discipline from parents while the younger are seen as more freewilled with fewer punishments overall.

Yet, I find that the question is similar to comparing apples to oranges in the sense that they don’t know what the family dynamic is, what the age gap between siblings is, the gender of the siblings or even if the parents of the house get along or possibly live separately.

These factors play entirely into the family’s social dynamic and most importantly how well each person acts and gets along within the household.

So here is an idea: Say you are the younger sibling who currently has an older sibling. Who do you think would get away with more and be more successful in life? The younger or older?

Notice how everything depends entirely on those principles? Because truthfully, while the younger might get away with more, it could also be the idea of parental burnout.

From New Port Academy, “Parents have been experiencing stress and burnout for decades, maybe even centuries. But Belgian psychology researchers Isabelle Roskam and Moïra Mikolajczak were the first to put a name to parental burnout, in the early 1980s” and “described as ‘an exhaustion syndrome.’”

Parental burnout not only affects how the parents of the household feel and act but how they manage to find themselves being “emotionally distanced from their children” and “a sense of ineffectiveness as a parent.”

While this is extreme, according to The New York Post, most parents “spend 5 hours and 18 minutes a day worrying about their kids” with “59 percent of parents admitting that sometimes the worry is so great it leads to a loss of sleep.”

So while parents are worried about what the oldest might do for the future, it only directly helps the child who needs to be prepared when they first go to college, get a job and figure out what they want to do in life.

Truthfully, birth order doesn’t impact who you are as a person and what you might achieve within life.

| CARTOON BY KATIE KENNEDY