Social Media Anonymous

via The New Yorker

My phone had been dying over the last few weeks. I took it to the Verizon store, where I was told it was a glitch in the new iOS, and then I took it back a few days later, at which point I was told that only the Apple store could help me. Fast forward past two missed Genius Bar appointments to Wednesday, when I finally managed to make it to the Apple store when I was supposed to, and the woman there informed me that I needed a new phone, was two months past warranty, and would have to contact my insurance provider.

And then my phone well and truly died.

My new phone arrived in the mid-afternoon on Thursday. I was without a phone for a total of 24 hours. Dear readers, you can imagine how bereft I was. No, that’s not the right word. Here’s what it was: I had fierce FOMO.

It’s funny, because I knew that anyone from my real life who needed to get in touch with me would, and that if it took longer for me to respond – because I couldn’t check my email anytime from anywhere or because they were going through Jon – it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The people I know in real life would wait, and they wouldn’t really wonder why I wasn’t replying instantaneously.

My FOMO was entirely social media-based. While there are very few scenarios in which I’d miss anything crucial by not having Instagram and Twitter at my fingertips while on the go, I knew that my feeds would move too quickly in my day without a phone for me to ever catch up. What if someone was sharing something that everyone else would see except me? And then everyone else would move on to the next thing, and I wouldn’t even know that I’d missed it? How would I know to miss what I didn’t know I’d missed?

Yes. It’s absurd.

Has someone started a Social Media Anonymous group in the DC area? I might need to go to a meeting. Perhaps Faceook knows where I can find one…