FOMO (Face Yoga, Overwhelming, Maintenance and Overconsumption)

Missed Retro night or MEDMUN party? Tried writing your midterm paper on your train back from a weekend trip with friends and it didn’t go well? Stuck in a 14.05 km² town in your 20s where you feel like you’re missing out on classic college experiences?

The early 20s are often advertised to be the most carefree and, according to clinical psychologist Meg Jay, the most defining years of one's life. But what exactly are these years defining if most youth navigating through them are battling with FOMO and are chronically overwhelmed? And how is this being used against us? 

In her book The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now, Jay argues that the biggest factor shaping young adults is entering the workforce. Citing this, she mentions that she refuses to work with 20-something-year-olds who are not under stress while at work. 

“If my 20-something clients aren’t on a steep learning curve at work, I would rather they get another job because it’s really about skill building,” she told UVA Today. “If you’re not feeling stressed and anxious at work as a 20-something, you’re probably not learning enough.” 

But who is this mindset serving? A 2023 American Psychological Association study on stress levels in young adults in America, defined as 18-34 year olds, revealed that 24% rated their stress level between 8 and 10 out of 10. An increase of 8% in overall stress levels was also observed compared to 2019—a change the APA linked to COVID-19. It should be noted that these findings most likely do not correlate with those in the Global South, for which statistics aren’t widely available. Looking at the data, it’s clear that people in their 20s are stressed and overwhelmed. So, where does the general stigma of Gen Z being careless, yet overly sensitive, come from? 

A 2023 Dazed article titled “Everyone needs to grow up” explains this phenomenon, noting: 

“Most complaints about the infantilism of young people have typically come from the right, which has pointed to safe spaces and trigger warnings as evidence that Gen Z and millennials have been coddled to the point of softness. The right-wing critique of infantilism usually contends that, due to a vague decline in moral fibre, young people aren’t willing to embrace the mantles of adulthood, like moving out of the family home, entering into a stable career, getting married and starting a family.” 

This right-wing idea of “softness” has not come alone—it has also brought justifications and cures to overwhelming stress with it. For some, the reason why people under 25 engage in behaviors that aren’t ideal can be explained by putting the blame on the frontal lobe. A popular belief—that has especially flourished on TikTok—claims that the age of 25 is the milestone at which life choices become clear, and henceforth, the feeling of overwhelmedness induced by decision making is no longer present. But how true is this?

In an interview with Dazed, the head of the University of Edinburgh's Psychology Department, Dr. Sarah MacPherson, highlighted the wide misconceptions surrounding frontal lobe development. She stated that although it is true that frontal lobe development ends at 25, this doesn’t determine a clear and strict distinction between choices made before that age.

Up until the early 2010s, the age of 16 was seen as the milestone age. Movies such as Sixteen Candles showcased characters hitting all their teenage milestones at 16. The idea of “sweet sixteen” being the perfect dating age during the 60s also signified the importance of the age in relation to transition into adulthood, especially for young girls. 

This age of “self fulfillment” kept being pushed further and further as many of today's young adults spent their critical ages of 16,18 and 21 in quarantine, without any chance of experiencing young adult milestones. Whatever was missed out on during the three years when COVID-19 was declared a health emergency is, in turn, being made up for right now. As we all know, we can’t make up for all the teenage and young adult experiences missed: attending high school house parties, carelessly drinking on a weekday or declaring “Euro summer” the minute we’re done with midterms. Responsibilities persist, but so does FOMO. This FOMO gradually grows as we see people who are, in fact, able to do all these things and balance it out with their academic life, and this subsequently turns into the feeling of chronic overwhelmedness. 

Feeling overwhelmed can be caused by many different factors, and frontal lobe development can’t always be blamed for it. Common symptoms of overwhelm include irritability, hopelessness, lack of motivation, panic and anxiety, low appetite and even problems with the immune system. And while the best way of solving this would be to take some time off and take everything one day at a time, social media’s obsession with self-care would beg to differ.

As our problems became more complex, the market economy has presented us with more niche solutions. You can buy hormone balancing supplements (with no medical oversight), a new body lotion with 10% niacinamide and 1% zinc, a new workout set and a pilates subscription and sip on your green juice all at once! If you instead prefer to focus on your education and lock-in, you can purchase ten different highlighters, a laptop stand to help your posture and a subscription to an app that manages your screen time. A lymphatic drainage massage might help with muscle relief (because muscles “hold trauma”) and a foot mask just might be the purchase standing between you and solving your actual problem of procrastination. 

Whether it’s a $300 white noise machine that is advertised to put you to sleep within 10 minutes, or a $500 ring that will track all your bodily functions, which will most likely not be accurate,  all the problems you can’t even imagine having have been solved for you. You are no longer only overwhelmed but you now also live in an overcrowded space. As if being exposed to advertisements of these isn’t enough, you also have the opportunity to buy them and test them out. Because investing in yourself can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Our chronic overwhelmedness has reached new heights. We are no longer overwhelmed by our tasks, relationships and responsibilities. We have entered a new era where we are overwhelmed by our purchases and the possibilities of them. AI is thinking—and most recently creating—in our place, so that we have fewer things to worry about. Yet the feelings of FOMO persist, no matter how much time we save not doing a reading for class or not editing an application. We still get bummed out when our friends post stories from a night out we had to sit out on, and are haunted by the regret of leaving our assignments to the last minute.

Our overwhelmedness seems to connect us to our irreducible humanity more than any emotion can. We stress about jobs, money, friendships and grades—because we’re human enough to understand that there is no definite solution to any of it. We continue to go out the night before the exam, knowing that we will regret it, and we do things knowing they will overcomplicate our relationships. We make mistakes, partly because some of us have the privilege to do so and partly because there is no other way around being human. We get overwhelmed and feel like the end of the world is around the corner, yet we wake up the next morning and at least try to be better. 

Being chronically overwhelmed shouldn’t be normalized, but there isn’t any way not to feel overwhelmed once in a while. And though a pillow spray might seem like just the thing to help let go of everything, there is a very high chance it won't. Not buying into marketing tactics that claim to help with feeling overwhelmed might be one of the most important steps towards breaking free from the “chronic” aspect of feeling so. So can recognizing that our biological development most likely isn’t the reason for all our recklessness. People over 30 get overwhelmed, and so do people over 50. We will hopefully be surviving at least 50 more years of feeling overwhelmed and missing out on things, so no need to waste all our emotions on it now.

Photo source: Toni Blay on Flickr