Every third person aged 15-19 strongly feels the fear of being disconnected from the Internet (FOMO), and only 6% of them do not experience it. These are the conclusions contained in the report from the fourth study “FOMO 2022. Poles and the fear of disconnection”, conducted on a representative group of Polish Internet users (aged 15+) by researchers from the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Bibliology at the University of Warsaw (UW), the Faculty of Psychology at the UW, the Ariadna Research Panel and the Research and Academic Computer Network (NASK).

According to a recent report on the FOMO (Fear of missing out) phenomenon, teenagers are still the group most at risk of anxiety about being disconnected from networks, information and social media events.

Due to being overloaded with an overabundance of information coming from the web, it is easy to fall into the trap of the compulsion to be constantly online, keeping up to date with news and responding immediately to every notification. “I encourage you to take small steps that will help you disconnect from the internet and experience the joy of being ‘offline’, says Wojciech Pawlak, Director of NASK.