When FOMO Becomes Expensive

Imagine this: one of your favourite music bands is on a world tour, and they are fortunately coming to India as well. You want to attend it, but you know that you need to start saving up for that new laptop you desperately need. During the ticketing period, you just happened to scroll through your Instagram feed, and all you see is the number of people who have bought the tickets and used reels to express their happiness. You watch one video, and your mind cannot help but want to watch one more, being genuinely happy for all those who were able to procure tickets. This continues for 3 more days, with each day featuring new faces celebrating their booking confirmation. And on the morning of the fifth day, you somehow have the tickets to the concert in your hands!

You have no idea what made you take such a crazy decision, knowing the importance of the new laptop and the irrelevance of the tickets. This is where the ‘irrationality’ of the human race comes into the picture. What is the reason behind making such irrational decisions? Why do humans regret not buying something that everyone else has? Why does the fear of missing out mess with our minds?

We generally give into the existence of these frequent ‘nudges’ which indirectly lead us to make decisions that we weren’t planning to take. This is where the psychology of economics plays its mind games. In simple words, when you find yourself drawn to buying something you look at everyone else having or figuring that everyone else on social media owns it, it activates a few threads in your mind which are primarily the unholy trinity of Loss Aversion, Social Conformity and the Cascading of Information.

Loss aversion is the bias that the human brain forms to avoid possible losses. Basically, the brain tells us that since the commodity is only available currently, if not purchased immediately, we will lose the opportunity to buy it and would hurt more than actually losing some money and buying the product! Thus resulting in a sudden and urgent need to buy the product and leading to an irrational decision.

Similarly, the social conformity heuristic in humans intensifies impulsive purchases. Looking at everyone else generates a sense of ‘not being accepted’ if one does not possess the same object. In an experiment conducted by Solomon Asch, a social psychologist in the 1950s, he was successfully able to prove the fact that even if one believes in something else individually, they tend to give into what everyone else thinks. Behavioral economists say that this is because people want to be accepted by their community and thus tend to make decisions that fit into their society’s norms, behaviour, and traditions.

And finally, the last member of this unholy trinity is the Cascading of Information. Everything on the internet has been passed down with various comments and compliments. One product can be twisted into the most useless thing on the planet or exemplified as the one product that everyone needs “to make life easier”. This constant availability of online “bestsellers”, review ranks, and flash sales leads consumers to not rely on their own research and blindly trust the reviews they see on the internet, thus leading them to make misinformed and hasty decisions based on unreliable information.

Now that we know the psychology behind why we buy something we do not intend to, how can we stop ourselves from actually purchasing a product or reduce the craving of owning something just because we have a deeply induced fear of missing out?

In the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tackles this very problem - of getting lured into external objects because others possess them, getting attached to the idea of having them, and forming a restless craving to acquire them. Krishna ji tells us that the solution to the problem is not in trying to give up buying anything at all or refraining from purchasing.

रागद्वेषवियुक्तैस्तु विषयानिन्द्रियैश्चरन् ।
आत्मवश्यैर्विधेयात्मा प्रसादमधिगच्छति ॥ 2.64 ॥

Through this verse from the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita he tells us that one should live life free of (Viyukth) Raga - attraction towards the belongings of others and Dvesa - dwelling in the fear of being left out or as we call it - the fear of loss aversion. He advises training the senses to obey the intellect rather than the emotional or physical self. In layman’s terms, He wants us to think twice before we feel like buying something we do not require. To overcome the desires on the physical level and genuinely consider the need to buy it. He tells us how FOMO hijacks our reasoning power and therefore controls our decision-making. By constantly checking ourselves to ensure that we are buying the right things, He promises ‘Prasada’ - a state of mental clarity and contentment.

The decision has always been in the hands of the individual: to succumb to the constant pulling of the threads or to resist these biases. If you want the latter, then keep in mind that this can only be achieved if you truly know what you are looking for and are not swayed by your desires, because in the end, FOMO is just another distraction that we cannot afford.