‘FOMO’ was coined by venture capitalist and writer Patrick J. McGinnis. At that time, McGinnis was a Harvard Business School student, and the term appeared in a satirical article in the student newspaper on May 10, 2004. It began as a joke between friends and became one of he most well-known phrases to define today’s digital anxiety. (Image: Instagram/@patrickjmcginnis)

According to reports, McGinnis wrote the piece titled “Social Theory at HBS: McGinnis’ Two FOs”, coining both FOMO: Fear of Missing Out, and a second term, FOBO, Fear of a Better Option. He wrote the article in under an hour, right before graduation, after noticing the phrase had already been circulating informally among classmates around his ski house in 2003 and 2004, as per Harvard Business School’s own retrospective, “FOMO No Mo”. (Image: Instagram/@patrickjmcginnis)

Reportedly, the term spread through word of mouth as HBS graduates carried it into their new workplaces, and BusinessWeek even published an article covering it. However, the real accelerant was proximity to something much bigger. Reports state, McGinnis lived just seven minutes from a Harvard undergraduate named Mark Zuckerberg, and as social media exploded, FOMO caught fire alongside it. Eventually, the term entered the dictionary, and McGinnis formally trademarked “FOMO” a decade later, in 2014. (Image: Instagram/@patrickjmcginnis)

In an interview with The Creative Coalition, McGinnis has explained that the concept behind FOMO did not start at Harvard at all. It started a few years earlier. He was living in New York and had taken his GMAT exam on September 10, 2001. The next morning 9/11 happened and that experience left him with a clear, urgent feeling: “You’ve got to live for every moment, you never know what’s going to happen.” (Image: Instagram/@patrickjmcginnis)

The mindset followed him to Harvard Business School that fall, where he found himself in the most choice-rich environment he had ever lived, packed with job opportunities, parties, trips, and social commitments. While trying to say yes to everything, he realized he was overwhelmed and anxious, and he was not alone in feeling that way. (Image: Instagram/@patrickjmcginnis)

Hence, the term FOMO came from one student’s real need and real concern, after 9/11, not to waste one single minute, which was distilled down to a satirical newspaper piece in less than an hour. After twenty years, the term is correlates with anxiety, social media addiction, and lower well-being, especially among the youth. (Image: AI generated)