Counterfactual Thinking Drives Us
I had already taken off my makeup. Tied my hair up, put sweatpants on, and tucked into bed with the glow of a show I wasn’t really watching on my iPad. My phone buzzed:“Come out with us!” Staring at the screen for a minute, I was exhausted and wanted to stay in. But ten minutes later, I was urgently reapplying eyeliner.
We don’t just fear missing out on events—we fear missing out on the right life. In a world shaped by comparison and hierarchy, FOMO turns from a passing feeling to a form of existential envy. It’s hard not to feel like everyone around you is living life better.
FOMO should not be mistaken as jealousy of what others have: it is moreso a doubt of whether we are doing enough with what we have. Success, joy, and even purpose are constantly broadcasted on social media, leaving doubt constantly lingering close by. FOMO is envy that has been made palatable. It makes us question both our choices and our worth. According to the American Psychological Association, envy is defined as “a negative emotion of discontent and resentment generated by desire for the possessions, attributes, qualities, or achievements of another,” (American Psychological Association). In day to day practice, however, envy isn’t always about material things and obvious status symbols. More often than not, it is about wholeness. We envy those who are centered, fulfilled, and sure of themselves– especially when we ourselves feel uncertain. The real trigger of FOMO is not that we weren’t invited, but that perhaps we have taken a wrong turn in life. Maybe the rest of the world has figured out something that we haven’t.
Imagine standing at a train station and watching a dozen different trains leave without you. Each one could have been headed toward a version of your life that could have been. That is counterfactual thinking: the tendency to imagine alternate versions of our lives based on what-ifs (Epstude & Roese). It creates an entire parallel life that you feel you should have lived. It leaves you wondering if you’re doing enough with the time you have. Counterfactual thinking is the psychological version of the multiverse, an infinite string of parallel lives differentiated by a single choice you did or didn’t make.
This is exactly why FOMO is different from old-school jealousy. FOMO is not about wanting what someone else has, but it is about fearing that your life is less important and meaningful than theirs. Envy is connoted with status: money, beauty, power. However, FOMO is harder to measure given that it is based on the envy of fulfillment. Since fulfillment is subjective, we never really know when we ourselves have it. We just know when it feels like someone else around us does. Of course, our whole global system runs on illusions. We know this in our heads. Photos are cropped, joy can be staged, and media is not real– I learnt that back in kindergarten. However, that doesn’t stop our brains from interpreting them as real. Studies have shown that even when people know social media distorts our reality, they still report lower self-worth and feelings of inadequacy (Merino et al.). Envy doesn’t care if the life you’re envying is fake. It only cares that it feels just real enough for you to doubt your own.
And of course, we participate in it too. Don’t tell me you don’t post your best angles, edit out quiet parts, and would never post nights we stay home in silence. We aren’t trying to deceive, but we want to be envied too. We want to believe that we are living a version of life that seems like it matters. We create the very thing we feel so excluded from.
Well, we know that we can’t unplug the world. We can’t stop people from sharing their joys, or stop ourselves from wishing that we were part of them. But we need to recognize that we aren’t missing out on tangible moments, but on meaning. And meaning is definitely not something we find by chasing what others are doing online.
Nobody, and I mean nobody gets to live all the lives. There will always be something happening somewhere else. Someone else will always be doing something shinier. In spite of that, it doesn’t make what we are doing less important or worthy of meaning. We don’t always need to live the most flashy lives. We need to be rooted. And, yes, that isn’t easy in a world where attention is currency. But it might be a way that we can stop envy from running our lives.