You’ve probably felt it before: that distinct sensation that your phone has just vibrated in your pocket. You quickly pull it out. No notification.

Another scenario: You’re going away for the weekend, determined to “disconnect.” The first few hours are pleasant. Then anxiety mounts. What’s happening on your emails? What conversations are you missing? You’re experiencing the “fear of missing out,” known by the acronym FOMO (  Fear Of Missing Out  ).

Where does this anxiety come from? From our brains wired to seek rewards? From social pressure? From our digital habits? The answer is probably a mix of all three, but not exactly in the way we’re told.

What thinkers have taught us about social anxiety

In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), one of the theorists invoked in the luxury industry , described “conspicuous consumption”: the aristocracy did not consume to satisfy needs, but to signal its social status. This logic generated anxiety: that of not being up to standard, of finding oneself excluded from the circle of the privileged.

At the same time, the German philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) extended this analysis by studying fashion. He described a tension: we simultaneously want to stand out and belong. Fashion temporarily resolves this contradiction, but at the cost of a perpetual race. As soon as a style spreads, it loses its value. This dynamic creates a system where no one is spared: the elite must constantly innovate while the rest chase codes that slip away.

In 1959, sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982) theorized our interactions as theatrical performances. We constantly manage the impression we give to others, alternating between the stage (where we play our role) and the wings (where we release the performance). His question resonates today: what happens when the wings disappear? When every moment becomes potentially documentable, shareable?

Finally, more recently, the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) developed the concept of “liquid modernity”: in a world of infinite options, anxiety is no longer linked to deprivation, but to saturation. How can we choose when everything seems possible? How can we be sure we’ve made the right choice?

These four thinkers obviously did not anticipate social networks, but they identified the deep-rooted causes of social anxiety: belonging to the right circle (Veblen), mastery of codes (Simmel), constant performance (Goffman) and the anxiety of choice (Bauman) – mechanisms that digital platforms systematically amplify.

FOMO in the digital age

With the widespread use of smartphones, the term became popular in the early 2010s. One study defines it as “a pervasive apprehension that others might be experiencing enriching experiences from which one is absent.” This anxiety stems from a dissatisfaction with basic needs (autonomy, competence, relationships) and leads to compulsive use of social media.

What does digital technology change? First, scale: we compare our lives to hundreds of edited lives. Second, permanence: anxiety is now continuous, accessible 24 hours a day. Finally, performativity: we no longer just experience FOMO, we produce it. This is how every Instagram story can provoke in others the anxiety we feel.

Phantom vibration syndrome illustrates this bodily inscription of anxiety. A study of medical interns revealed that 78% of them reported these phantom vibrations, a rate that climbed to 96% during periods of intense stress. These tactile hallucinations are not simple perceptual errors, but manifestations of heightened social anxiety.

Beyond dopamine: Anxiety about belonging

Many popular science books and content have popularized the idea that FOMO can be explained by the activation of our brain’s “reward circuit.”

This system works thanks to dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain (neurotransmitter) that triggers both anticipated pleasure and a strong urge to act so as not to miss out. In The Human Bug (2019), Sébastien Bohler notably develops the thesis according to which our brain is programmed to constantly seek more resources (food, social status, information).

According to this perspective, social media platforms exploit these neural circuits by systematically triggering responses from the reward system, particularly through social validation signals (likes, notifications), which leads to forms of behavioral addiction.

Other neuroscience research points to a complementary, perhaps more decisive, dimension: the activation of brain regions linked to the processing of social information and the fear of exclusion. Research conducted by Naomi Eisenberger and her colleagues since the 2000s has revealed that experiences of social exclusion activate brain regions that partially overlap with those involved in the processing of physical pain.

They suggest that social rejection constitutes a form of biologically ingrained suffering. These two mechanisms—reward seeking and exclusion avoidance—are not mutually exclusive, but could operate synergistically. Ultimately, it’s not so much the lack of a like that worries us as the feeling of being on the margins, of not belonging to the social group.

This neurobiological inscription of the fear of exclusion confirms, in another way, what Veblen, Simmel, Goffman and Bauman had analyzed: the anxiety of belonging constitutes a fundamental driving force of our social behavior, which digital platforms now systematically amplify.

Regain control of attention?

Comparative social anxiety didn’t wait for Instagram to exist. But we must recognize a difference in scale: our brains, shaped for groups of a few dozen individuals, are not equipped to process the incessant flow of alternative lives that scrolls across our screens.

Faced with this saturation, disconnection is not an escape but a reconquest. Choosing not to look, not to know, not to be permanently connected is not missing out on something—it is gaining the ability to be fully present in one’s own life. This awareness has given rise to a concept mirroring FOMO: JOMO, or “Joy of Missing Out ,” the pleasure rediscovered in the conscious choice to disconnect and reclaim time and attention.

Author Bio: Emmanuel Carré is Professor, director of Excelia Communication School, associate researcher at the CIMEOS laboratory (U. de Bourgogne) and CERIIM (Excelia) at Excelia