How to help students overcome the fear of missing out

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor… 

“I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” 

Why is this quotation from Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, relevant to college counselling? 

Sylvia Plath is salient to us because we are supporting students who are making decisions about their futures. Our students are lucky in that they will have a wide array of futures to choose from – from a range of countries to a choice of majors. Invariably, they will have to make a decision about which future to choose – and with that, they will experience FOMO: fear of missing out. 

The psychology behind fomo

We are excellent at thinking about the future and then wondering about the other futures unrealised. Literature and movies are replete with regret about roads unable to be walked, unmet potential, extinguished possibilities. 

FOMO can be explained with three psychological concepts: opportunity cost, loss aversion and paradox of choice. 

Opportunity cost is a term used in economics and psychology. It refers to the potential gain provided by a missed opportunity. In terms of thinking about various futures, when a student chooses university A and then laments the experience they would have had at university B, they are dwelling on opportunity cost. This can fuel FOMO.

Loss aversion is when the negative emotional impact of a loss is felt more strongly than the positive emotional impact of an equivalent gain. In the context of college counselling, if a student is fixating on what they’re giving up by rejecting university B or major B, instead of the gains they are making by choosing university A or major A, they are experiencing loss aversion and, in essence, FOMO. 

Paradox of choice refers to the phenomenon where the more options we have, the less satisfaction we experience about our decision. An abundance of choice is often presented as a positive opportunity to exercise your agency – but being faced with too many options can actually make you less happy with your final decision. Think about a student being in the fortunate position to have eight offers from which to choose, as opposed to two. Choosing one out of eight is actually harder than choosing one out of two. 

A related construct to the paradox of choice is decision paralysis, the phenomenon where someone feels unable to make a choice as a result of feeling overwhelmed or anxious about the sheer number of choices. In the context of university decisions, when a student cannot narrow down a list of potential countries or start researching more than 3,000 institutions in the US, this can be explained by decision paralysis. 

Intentional or unintentional FOMO

Another layer can be added depending on whether the FOMO is intentional or unintentional. 

Intentional fomo arises when one chooses to miss out on something, but still feels bad about it. For instance, think about a student letting go of one offer to accept another. 

Unintentional FOMO arises when you have no control over what you’re missing out on – imagine, for example, a student who is rejected from their dream university and then sees their classmate offered a place. 

What demarcates the two is the construct of agency, which is the feeling that one is in control of one’s own decisions or actions. When a student chooses one offer or the other (intentional FOMO), they have agency. However, they can still experience discomfort from holding two conflicting thoughts: “I chose this” and “I am anxious about missing out.” This is actually cognitive dissonance as well as distress resulting from opportunity cost, loss aversion and paradox of choice. 

Given that FOMO is a frustrating and distressing phenomenon either way – and one that our students are very likely to experience – what can we as college counsellors do to help students alleviate this?

Strategies to alleviate FOMO

Here are 10 strategies to help alleviate FOMO.

1. Acknowledge and validate the experience of FOMO

Anxiety is normal. Decision-making is an emotionally complex process, and it’s a peculiar, stressful time the students are going through. Hearing you, the college counsellor, address this can help the students feel seen and understood. 

2. Teach anti-rumination strategies

Just because thinking “What if I went to university X?” a million times is a normal human response does not mean it’s a helpful one. Rumination can be a negative effect of FOMO, so let’s teach our students how to fight this. Anti-rumination strategies involve thought stopping (saying “Stop!” inside your mind and then replacing the rumination with a positive thought), mindfulness or scheduling worry time. Read this article for more strategies.

3. Advise students to reduce social comparison 

Whether this involves curating their social media, taking intentional digital breaks or reducing exposure to comparison triggers (whatever they may be), helping our students practice selective attention and setting boundaries will help tackle one cause of FOMO. 

4. Guide students through systematic decision-making

Creating a structured decision-making process and evaluating the options objectively and systematically can help with the anxiety of nebulous decision-making and resulting FOMO. An explicit calculation of potential gains and losses can help prevent students blowing the losses out of proportion. 

5. Encourage value-based decision-making

Let’s help students think about themselves – their own values, interests and goals. How do these fit in with the university or the major they’re choosing? FOMO can be alleviated when the student is filtering out opportunities with a firm grounding of the self. 

6. Understand the nature of decisions and trade-offs

If the opportunity arises, this can be a good time to inform the students that part of growing up and becoming an independent, emotionally regulated and responsible adult involves making informed decisions, grieving the losses and moving on. Deciding where to go to university is a great time to start this. 

7. Accept our finitude

To be human is to be finite and limited. We simply cannot experience everything. Focusing on the immediate reality in front of us (“I’ve decided on a university to go to”), instead of living out in the imagined hypotheticals (“all the universities I’ll never go to”) will lead to a more flourishing and grounded life. 

8. Practise JOMO 

What’s the opposite of FOMO? It’s the joy of missing out. As in: help your student actively see and celebrate what they are gaining through their decision. By doing this, we’re fighting loss aversion and averting their gaze from opportunity cost. 

It’s also a strategy to reframe their situation. Help them see that attending a university is a joyous occasion to celebrate, not simply a dilemma to agonise over. Here’s an article about JOMO, if you want to learn more.

9. Help them understand there is no perfect decision

There is no perfect decision. On a related note, there is also no better or worse decision, because decisions cannot be quantitatively compared with one another. Decisions lead to different possibilities, not better or worse scenarios. A thriving university life is possible and will happen with either road travelled. It will just look different. Helping students understand this can reduce the agony of “What if I choose the worse option?” 

10. Emphasise that this is not the most important decision of their life

Students are probably hearing from many angles that choosing their university is the biggest decision of their lives. As the college counsellor, you can present a reasoned voice: that university is in fact not the be-all and end-all. This helps lower the stakes so that students feel less stressed. 

Of course, this is certainly a very important decision. But as adults, we know that there are many more important decisions later that will help shape their lives. Remind them that they will continue to make decisions once they’re at university, and that these will be as important as deciding which university to attend. So let’s decide and move forward. 

This article was written with inspiration from Holly Huang.