Facebook recently added a feature to help you track how much time you spend on the platform. Instagram will now show a checkmark when you are done scrolling through your friends’ updates from the past two days. A recent NY Times feature even proposed that this might be the summer of “JOMO” (the joy of missing out), a “benevolent younger cousin” to FOMO (the fear of missing out). This shift has been in the making for years. Spending all day reading posts about people having fun without you is a great way to crush anyone’s own soul.
Thankfully, now more people are finding that truth out for themselves and demanding more balance and changing their habits. The platforms are finally taking real steps to help people manage their addictions, and a shift is underway. The question it raises for all of us is this: when consumers intentionally seek out ways to disconnect and take their own Desperate Detox, how does that shift the ways that we deliver the products and services that we offer to them?
