This is Clued In, a column that gives you insight into some of the clues and answers from the DailyExpertNews Crossword.
“Social media-induced anxiety, in short,” four letters, FOMO
FOMO has been used in five DailyExpertNews crossword puzzles, according to XWordInfo. It first appeared as a 2017 entry with the designation “Feeling that everyone is having fun without you, in modern slang” and several other ways have emerged, including “Concern about being excluded from the fun, in the short.” It recently appeared in Wednesday’s puzzle created by Rose Conlon.
FOMO – fear of missing out – is the experience of feeling left out at a gathering, event, or moment of connection between friends. The concept of friendship underwent a major shift during the coronavirus pandemic, and that change will most likely set off a ripple effect for decades to come. Social distancing guidelines turned weekend brunches and monthly dinner plans into Zoom happy hours, “how are you?” text messages and FaceTime calls. Some people became attached to crossword puzzles and leaned on group chats for a sense of community.
The first written mention of FOMO appeared in May 2004, when Patrick J. McGinnis used the term in an op-ed in The Harbus, the magazine of the Harvard Business School. McGinnis is credited with coining both FOMO and FOBO, or Fear of a Better Option, but FOMO caught on and spread faster than FOBO ever did, Sylvia Sierra, a linguist and assistant professor at Syracuse University, told me.
“These kinds of acronyms or neologisms are hard to pin down in terms of origin,” Ms Sierra said, “but it seems generally accepted that FOMO’s coinage can be traced back to the early 21st century.”
In August 2004, the term appeared online in the North Coast Journal and, said Ms. Sierra, “a lot of people seem to wrongly attribute it to the initial instance of FOMO.” The publication featured a woman providing a definition for FOMO, showing “how new this neologism was in 2004,” she added.
Social media is often the trigger for the feeling of FOMO. Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, said she first learned about FOMO in connection with social media because it “increases the chances of hearing about an event you weren’t invited to and seeing photos of the smiling, happy people who are at the event.” Those same people may feel miserable and only smile at the photo, she added, or they may have appeared fleetingly at the event just long enough to post a photo.
Fundamentally, FOMO is more connected with anxiety than with anxiety, said Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist. “Fear is a biological response to an immediate threat, while fear is anticipatory,” she said. “We worry about the consequences of missing an experience.”
Experts say FOMO may be preventable, despite pandemic. “When we feel safe with ourselves and especially with our friendships, we can see our friends hanging out without us and not take it personally,” said Marisa G. Franco, a psychologist. “Feeling insecure, feeling like something is missing from our own lives, mental health issues — those can be a trigger for FOMO.”
Two people can go on social media and have completely different experiences, Dr. Franco on. One person may see a message and not feel left out or sad, while the other person may look at the same message and feel left out and hurt. Fundamentally, “FOMO is an interpretation process,” she said.
Manufacturer’s Notes
“I didn’t mean to include FOMO in this puzzle, but I’m glad it turned out to be appropriate, as I’d like to see jargon that younger solvers in particular can relate to. I originally marked it as “Concern about missed plans, in short,” but I prefer the editors’ version — social media can definitely cause it!”