Delaying social media? Help tweens understand FOMO, friends and social limits while they wait.
Hi friends!
Of all the pressures I face as a mom, there are four little words that send me into mama-bear-mode without fail: Mom…I’m missing out. (Whew! Did your blood pressure spike, too?)
It turns out, of all the reasons parents share that they allow their tweens to use social media, I don’t want them to miss out is squarely at the top. Honestly? It makes sense. We are social by design—God hardwired us with a very real need for belonging.
So when our kids come to us with FOMO, what are we to do? Their need for community is real and it’s powerful… And yet, while social media apps promise to soothe the pain of social exclusion, the truth is they often make it sting worse.
Why is that? Let’s unpack FOMO in this mini-lesson.
xo, kb
PS- Thoughts below are snacks to share with your teens and tweens--but if you want something meatier to chew on yourself, two of my favorite sociology researchers recently released dynamite resources! Eek! Check out Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast series on living beyond human scale and Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation on the great rewiring of the next generation.
This February, as soon as the Kansas City Chiefs advanced to the 2024 Superbowl, the internet just had one question: But how will Taylor Swift make it from her final show in Tokyo to Las Vegas in time for kickoff?
The answer? Technology.
The thing about Taylor Swift is…she’s human. And while some humans are faster than others, the speed at which most humans walk is 3.5 miles per hour—the speed that Jesus walked. Godspeed.
In order for the global superstar to not miss out on Superbowl, she would need to place her body on a highspeed machine that could catapult her across the ocean, defying the limits of human speed. And as effortless and easy as this option seemed, she would have to give something up to make it happen. She would miss out on the sights, sounds, smells of a slower journey. There would be no time to linger after the concert with fans in Tokyo. No bubble bath for her exhausted body. No celebratory meal with her production team. In order for Taylor to not miss out on one thing, she have to would miss out on something else.
The reality is, as human beings, we have limits. Like Taylor Swift, you only have one body. You cannot be everywhere…even when your Google calendar has three commitments listed on the same date at the same time.
Sometimes, you can’t be everywhere because your schedule is too busy or your body needs rest. But sometimes, you can’t be everywhere because you were left out. Either intentionally…or by accident.
Someone forgot to forward you the invite to the party. No one noticed your number missing on the group text.
Most of us would give anything for a magic wand to guarantee that we would never be excluded again—and opening a social media account seems like a quick and easy solution. But the truth is, social media apps do not soothe our burns when we are left out. Instead, they turn up the heat.
Even if you download Snapchat, GroupMe, and double check to make sure your number is listed on all the group texts…you won’t always be included, and it will sting . On top of feeling excluded from meaningful moments, you now have the extra burden of watching them play out…in living color…in multiple places. Classmates gathered at the ice cream shop. A recap of that fun youth group trip you weren’t allowed to go on. Celebrations of the team you were cut from. Spring break vacation photos…Uff!
To add salt to our wounds, social media apps are designed to keep a running tally of our friendships and connections. How many times we are tagged. Liked. Viewed. Retweeted. So in addition to feeling left out, we also feel left behind, and we start running on a hamster wheel that goes faster and faster the harder we try to keep up.
But what if God designed us for something slower…?
In the 1990’s (before the days of social media), a researcher named Robin Dunbar was curious about how fast our hamster wheel could go. He had a hunch that there is a limit to the number of friends a person could have—there are, after all, only 24 hours in a day and healthy relationships take time and attention. He wanted to know exactly how many relationships humans can actually “keep up” with in a meaningful way. He was especially interested in identifying "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”
His finding? Somewhere around 150.
150 is the number of people we can call meaningful friends—the people, say, you’d invite to a large party. If you are looking for the number of deeper or closer friends—ones you can turn to for sympathy when you need it, the ones you can confide in about most things—that number is only 15. The most intimate circle, 5, is your closest support group. These are often your family members and maybe one or two best friends. On the flipside, if you want to know how many “acquaintances” you can handle, that number is around 500…and when your Instagram feed says you have 1500 followers…chances are, most of them are just names and faces to you. Not deep friendships.
Like an elevator, we have a built-in social capacity. And while we tend to feel guilty or ashamed when we can’t keep up with our scads of Instagram friends in a deep or meaningful way— God does not see our missing out as sin. Instead, our limits are actually a part of God’s original act of making us, which he called “good.”
Missing out is painful…but it’s a normal, required part of being human. While social media apps promise to whisk us away from FOMO like a supersonic jet, the truth is our bodies were not made to travel above the clouds for long. Eventually our fuel tank will burn out, and in the chase to be included, we just might miss out on something even greater: the joy of walking through life with a smaller number of deep friendships.
Author Krista Boan
Krista Boan is the co-founder of the international nonprofit Screen Sanity , host of the Screen Sanity podcast and a former middle school teacher. Her current work is developing simple social media mentorship resources for tweens, which she shares through the Social Compass newsletter. Krista has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NBC with Diane Sawyer, the New York Times and Christianity Today. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and four t(w)eens.
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