YOLO is over. FOMO is for chumps. These days, it's all about MOMO.

YOLO is over. FoMo is for chumps. These days, it’s all about MoMo.

First of all, let’s translate that last sentence for everybody born before 1990.

YOLO stands for ‘You Only Live Once’, and it’s the motto people yell before making the kinds of life choices that usually involve a lot of alcohol.

‘FoMo‘ stands for ‘Fear Of Missing Out’ and it’s a feeling people get when they see all their friends posting fun stuff on social media that they aren’t involved in.

And now, because it’s time to accept that we can no longer function as normal humans without computers, a new emotion has made its debut:

MoMo, or ‘Mystery Of Missing Out’.

Seriously, this is a thing.

MoMo is what happens when the friends, family and people you follow on social media go quiet. So if FoMo is all about getting jealous when you see people posting the fun things they’re doing, MoMo is when you can’t see people posting anything, so you get paranoid about what’s going on.

It’s basically an emotion that describes what it was like to grow up when a landline was all that connected you to your friends. MoMo is how the eternally connected kids of today are describing the feeling that comes with not knowing what everybody is doing at every waking moment.

And they don’t know how to handle it.

Just this week, the internet went into meltdown with rumours that Miley Cyrus had died. Why? She hadn’t posted on her Instagram feed for three days, so that was clearly the only possible explanation (she’s fine, by the way). And the Telegraph recently interviewed some very anxious 20-somethings who described what the dreaded MoMo feels like: “I have my favourite Instagram profiles I like to check daily,” one of them said. “If they go quiet I get MoMo for sure… You think – what can be so good that they aren’t posting?”

Hmmm, yeah. If only there was some way besides social media to keep in touch with friends…

Apparently MoMo all stems from our evolutionary need to belong. It starts with cliques in the playground and grows from there. But these days, the playground is often a virtual one, and kids and adults alike are finding it hard to connect without the status updates, tweets and Instagram posts that usually do most of the work for them.

Psychologist Dr. Terri Apter told the Telegraph:

“The starting point was when everything that happened to your friends was being posted on social media. You knew how to keep up. You expected to know when someone got into uni, got a new job, or ended a relationship… Suddenly, you feel like something major has gone on without your knowing it. Your mum and grandma might be used to not knowing what’s going on, but you’re not.”

Hmmm, yeah. IF ONLY THERE WAS SOME WAY BESIDES SOCIAL MEDIA TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH FRIENDS.

Have we really become so hopeless at socialising as humans, without screens, that we are at a complete loss when information isn’t provided for us online? How is MoMo a thing that is so common, it now needs its own acronym? Are really comfortable giving coveted acronym status to an emotion that essentially proves we’re all socially inept?

How did we get to the point where someone goes social media quiet, and our first assumption is that they’re dead?

Can we please just reject MoMo as a thing? In fact, here’s a good first step we can all take.

Answer this question:

If someone doesn’t announce their engagement online, did the engagement ever actually happen?

If you answered yes, well done, you do not have MoMo.

If you answered no, you lose. Get better at life.

Would you really freak out if these guys stopped posting?

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