Have you ever seen your friend post an Instagram photo of themselves at a party or a wedding or the zoo or on vacation or just hanging out with friends – and felt a small pang of jealousy?

This is FOMO – the “fear of missing out.” It may sound shallow and honestly a little stupid, but it’s a real thing that a lot of people experience.

According to a study by the Royal Society for Public Health in the U.K., “users who spent more than two hours a day on social media are more likely to report poor mental health and symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

This study found that the app that seemed to leave the most negative impact on users is Instagram. 

For college students, this makes sense. In my experience, college students use different social media sites for different things:

Facebook is for posting life events like engagements or new jobs, posting albums of pictures, sharing food videos and telling people “happy birthday.” We (college students) use Facebook to prove that we’re successful – or at least trying to be. 

Twitter is the closest thing to being able to hear someone’s constant stream of thought. People use Twitter to post about the little things that happen in their lives, retweet videos of dogs and to post their true feelings that maybe aren’t politically correct enough for Facebook. We use Twitter to prove that we’re witty – or, again, at least trying to be. 

Instagram is where we really prove how cool we are. We’re always trying to show people that we aren’t losers. Whether it’s a selfie to show that we can take good pictures, a group shot to show that we have friends, a picture of food to show that we either have good taste or are good cooks, or a picture of an event or vacation to show that we have money/are involved. 

The report of the study said that seeing all of these pictures of people proving their coolness can cause users to “compare and despair.” Viewers see pictures of their friends at the pool all day and think “Why wasn’t I invited?” “I wish I was there.”

Douglas Gentile, a social psychology professor at Iowa State said in an email, “We often look at others to get a sense of ourselves. If everyone has an iPhone and we don’t, then we feel badly. If everyone else seems better off or smarter or prettier, then we feel lower self esteem… [this] is called social comparison.”

This constant social comparison can make us feel worse about ourselves if we don’t think that our lives are as great as those who we follow on social media. But, it’s important to remember that what people put on social media isn’t the whole story. 

“People often use social media as a way to showcase little bits of information about themselves, and often it’s the shiniest bits,” Gentile said. “So, if I am looking at all my friends having fun experiences on social media, it could make me feel like I’m missing out.”

Most people won’t post pictures on Instagram of them sitting at home doing nothing or post a video of them fighting with their friends or significant other. 

So, before you start feeling bad about your life because you’re FOMO-ing while scrolling through Insta, remember that there is more going on in their lives outside of the two seconds that it took to take the picture. No one’s life is as perfect as their social media makes them seem.