The freedom to be out of the loop

Not long ago, I was with friends laughing about a video I had never seen. “You haven’t seen that?” someone asked. I laughed it off, but on my way home, I opened my phone to see what I had missed.

It was trivial. Another video would soon replace it. Still, I felt one beat behind the world.

Trends once gave people a common language. Missing a popular TV show might leave you out of a conversation, but it rarely felt like falling behind in life.

That has changed.

Our phones now show each of us different videos, music and news. In the same cafe, one person watches financial commentary, another a travel vlog, while someone else scrolls through short clips. We may think we are seeing what matters now, but we are often looking at different worlds.

As we have become more connected, our common ground has shrunk. Algorithms create personalized streams of attention. We live in the same era, yet experience different versions of it.

And still, we fear missing out.

We feel it when everyone else understands a meme we do not, or when a day away from social media makes the conversation seem to have moved ahead. Almost nothing has been lost. What remains is the feeling that something has been missed.

FOMO — the fear of missing out — is no longer simply about not knowing the latest trend. It is also the fear of being left out of information, relationships and conversations.

Algorithms do more than recommend what we like. They shape what we consider important. What looks like “the thing everyone is talking about” may simply be what a platform has selected for us.

Perhaps platforms produce not only trends, but the feeling of missing them.

That feeling makes us check notifications, reopen apps and keep scrolling. As the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” argued, social media is an industry built around attention. Platforms compete for our time.

Breaking news, viral videos, surging stocks and memes create the same sensation: If we do not look now, we may be too late.

Digital fatigue comes not only from too much information, but from too much choice. We keep deciding what to watch while being reminded of what we may have missed.

Some people are moving in the opposite direction. They turn off notifications, delete short-form video apps or read a book instead of reaching for a phone. They are not rejecting technology. They are deciding when it deserves their attention.

This is sometimes called JOMO, the “joy of missing out”: accepting that we do not need to follow every trend.

Ignoring change is not the answer. The important skill is deciding what deserves our attention and what can pass us by.

Artificial intelligence will make recommendations more precise and create new interests faster. Knowing what is trending may become easier. Knowing what actually matters to us may become harder.

For years, we worried about having too little information. Today, the problem is too much information and too much choice. The question is no longer what we can see, but what we choose not to see.

Perhaps the advantage of the future will belong not to those who follow every trend, but to those who know which ones they can afford to miss.

Before opening the screen again, one question is worth asking: Is this something I chose to care about — or something someone else chose for me to see?

A professional educator in Seoul, Park Myung-kwan examines the intersection of humanities and modern education.