For more than a decade, the term FOMO has been part of the vernacular. Like "gaslighting" or "impostor syndrome," it gave a name to an emotional state, allowing us to think about it, and even feel it, in a new way.
The extent to which FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) has permeated popular culture can be seen in two television series (one Hungarian and one Dutch), a number of popular songs named after the phenomenon, and the recurring advertisements that continually reflect it back to us.
Dr. Dan Herman, an Israeli marketing consultant and researcher, claims that he conceived and used the term "FOMO" in marketing lectures as far back as the late 1990s. As it happens, this reporter is witness to the fact that Herman used the term before 2003. However, according to Wikipedia, the term FOMO was invented by Patrick James McGinnis, now a writer and venture capitalist, who first used it in the "Harvard Business Review" in 2004.
Now Herman is fighting for his credit. He has no intention of missing out on everything this attribution might bring.
It all began with ad agency research
Why is it important for you to claim ownership of this term?
"Until now, I haven’t felt that I was missing out just because not everyone associated this revolution with my name. Now, I want to use it to achieve goals that matter to me, and that’s why it’s become important."
The goal Herman refers to is building FOMO Authority, a global company that applies the methods he has developed to help people address the challenges of FOMO - a phenomenon so many have found troubling - and even learn to harness it to their advantage.
How did you come to be dealing with FOMO?
"In 1996, I was VP of strategy at the Bauman Bar Rivnay advertising agency. We were conducting a focus group study for skincare brand Careline. At that time, the key concept in marketing was customer loyalty, and the perception was that customers like to choose one brand and stick to it, and that switching has logistical and emotional costs.
"But out of the conversations, the opposite emerged. It seemed that adherence to a brand also has a cost, and consumers actually want something new for the sake of it being new. One told us, ‘You have to switch shampoos after a while. Otherwise, it stops working.’"
But the hunt for novelty and excitement still isn’t FOMO. Thrill-seeking is a positive feeling, while the idea of FOMO has an element of fear, or worry caused by the multitude of possibilities. "Psychologists describe FOMO attacks in their patients just like a kind of anxiety attack," Herman explains, recounting that he identified the fear component following a follow-up study after Careline. He initiated and executed that study with Avinoam Brog, CEO of research institute MarketWatch. "In 2000, we had already published an academic paper on the concept of Fear of Missing Out, although we hadn’t yet used the acronym FOMO."
In 2002, Herman published an article about the topic on the "All About Branding" website; the site no longer exists, but the document Herman submitted has an internal date indicating when it was created, and in the article, he had already used the abbreviation. The same is true of another article from 2003, published on website "The Pool." "In 2004, I had already published a very advanced article on the subject, as part of a compendium of academic articles published in India, in which we used the term FOMO, many times."
Pressure to make the most of every opportunity
From the consumer’s perspective, FOMO presents another pitfall: falling prey to marketing tactics that exploit the phenomenon to drive sales, such as "Only 2 tickets left! 40 people are interested," limited-edition product lines, and pop-up shops.
Today, the phenomenon is typically linked to the rise of social networks, "But I dealt with it even before Facebook, before smartphones," Herman recalls. It was an idea that was ahead of its time, and the phenomenon "blew up" academically only in 2013.
"There's tremendous pressure to make the most of all opportunities," says Herman. "Our sense of quality of life is directly related to the question of ‘How much have I utilized my potential.’ But because of the enormous supply, making the most of it is impossible." And this is where social networks come in, constantly showing us the alternatives we didn't choose.
In a 2014 comprehensive marketing study conducted by entertainment and leisure website Eventbrite to describe the millennial profile (people born between 1981 and 1996), it was found that 69% said they had FOMO. A 2020 paper published in PLOS One found that 58% of a representative sample of the American population often felt FOMO, and 81% experienced it at least occasionally.
"This has an impact on our quality of life in many areas," says Herman. "Relationships, parenting, careers, education and investments. It only gets worse with success, because new possibilities open up."
"Although the phenomenon takes a significant emotional toll, few psychological strategies have been developed to help people cope with it," he says. Interest in FOMO has remained largely confined to marketing. ‘We see people discussing it among themselves, but they’re not getting any answers.’"
The managers’ dilemma: Between frenzy and paralysis
Herman is not a psychologist, but a few years ago, he began collecting and analyzing the latest published research. On the basis of this, he is currently working on developing a set of proprietary tools. "I developed the FOMO Compass, a tool that can be called therapeutic or training, designed to transform the phenomenon from something that destroys your life to one that helps you navigate life."
How does this tool work?
"The problem of FOMO stems from two sources. One is that FOMO is activated according to our beliefs, most of which are unconscious, about what will satisfy our needs and do us good in life. These beliefs, which we have gathered from early childhood onwards, are in many cases ineffective, contradictory, or were useful in the past but are no longer useful now. The result: we feel FOMO in too many situations, regarding too many possibilities and opportunities, many of which are disappointing.
"The second source is that we automatically react to FOMO. This is a strong emotional impulse that results in, for example, purchases we regret, hasty reactions, and so on.
"I’ve developed different versions of the FOMO Compass process, for professionals such as psychotherapists and emotional therapists at one end and management consultants at the other. It’s designed to make the feeling of FOMO effective, a compass that helps us make the most of our opportunities in all areas of life. The process first helps create a delay so that we don't react automatically. In the second stage, it examines and updates the beliefs that motivate us. In this way, the phenomenon becomes a tool for identifying what we need to address."
The real problem isn’t the information or the opportunities themselves, but how people respond to them. "We tend to react at two extremes: the frenzy end and the paralysis end. I work a lot with CEOs, and many of them are caught up in the frenzy. They feel compelled to adopt every new technology and embrace every new idea, sometimes to the detriment of their businesses. One CEO told me that one day, when he said to an employee, ‘I’ve got a new idea,’ she burst into tears and exclaimed, ‘Not another new idea!’ Research shows that managers make too many changes, but this tendency has not been linked to FOMO.
"On the other hand, we see people in their 20s or even 30s who are stuck at home and don't know what to do with their lives. They say about every possibility: 'Is this all I'll do in life?' and in the end they don't do anything."
In the job market, this phenomenon leads to organizations finding it difficult to retain employees and employees feeling dissatisfied with their jobs, Herman says. "And in parenting, it can cause people to have children without really wanting to, or avoid having children until it's too late, or they have children and then drive them crazy because they want them to realize every possible opportunity and not close the door on a single one."
Turning fear into a compass for living
Growing older can be one of the triggers for FOMO, as can be seen in midlife crises. In fact, all things considered, FOMO is a fear of death. If we were immortal, perhaps we would feel that we had time to do everything.
"As we come to terms with the finite nature of our lives, we may feel that opportunities are slipping away, and in reality, some opportunities do close. At best, we come to terms with this feeling by recognizing that we have chosen certain things that were right for us and within our reach, and that at least some of the difficult decisions are behind us. If we fail to come to terms with this feeling, it can create a restlessness that drives us to act, sometimes in ways that are helpful and sometimes in ways that are harmful. At worst, however, it can lead to despair and a sense of having missed out on life itself."
How does one deal with this feeling? Herman suggests that we should first identify the feeling of FOMO, observe it, and forgive ourselves with the understanding that it is almost impossible to avoid. Next, we can tell ourselves that FOMO itself is a beneficial emotion, that it can be an excellent compass when it works correctly. "We feel a fear of missing out because we have a desire, we have a passion, and that's actually a positive thing. Simply recognizing that this feeling doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us or with our lives, is the first step toward coming to terms with it."
He adds, "The goal is to identify the areas in which we can live with the fear of missing out and those in which we want to focus on making the best possible choices, while recognizing that no choice is ever truly optimal."
The fear of missing out is seen as a problem for young people in the face of social media, which is why experts sometimes recommend a type of withdrawal from digital devices. "In my opinion, this approach usually isn’t right," says Herman, "because we don't really want to stop FOMO, but rather its negative consequences."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 25, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.