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Trump’s push to control Greenland echoes US purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867

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theconversation.com – William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, Visiting Distinguished Professor, University of Alaska Anchorage – 2025-01-08 16:06:00

The U.S. bought Alaska and its significant natural resources and beautiful scenery for what amounts to a steal.

AP Photo/Mark Thiessen

William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, University of Alaska Anchorage

President-elect Donald Trump is again signaling his interest in Greenland through a series of provocative statements in which he’s mused about the prospect of the U.S. taking ownership – perhaps by force or economic coersion – of the world’s largest island by area.

Talk of a takeover of Greenland may seem fanciful. But it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. was able to procure a piece of the Arctic. The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867. To mark the 150th anniversary of the sale in 2017, we asked William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, a visiting professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, to write about that historic sale. This is the article we published then, with minor updates.

On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Russian envoy Baron Edouard de Stoeckl signed the Treaty of Cession. With a stroke of a pen, Tsar Alexander II had ceded Alaska, his country’s last remaining foothold in North America, to the United States for US$7.2 million.

That sum, amounting to just $138 million in today’s dollars, brought to an end Russia’s 125-year odyssey in Alaska and its expansion across the treacherous Bering Sea, which at one point extended the Russian Empire as far south as Fort Ross, California, 90 miles from San Francisco Bay.

Today, Alaska is one of the richest U.S. states thanks to its abundance of natural resources, such as petroleum, gold and fish, as well as its vast expanse of pristine wilderness and strategic location as a window on Russia and gateway to the Arctic.

So, what prompted Russia to withdraw from its American beachhead? And how did it come to possess it in the first place?

As a descendant of Inupiaq Eskimos, I have been living and studying this history all my life. In a way, there are two histories of how Alaska came to be American – and two perspectives. One concerns how the Russians took “possession” of Alaska and eventually ceded it to the U.S. The other is from the perspective of my people, who have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and for whom the anniversary of the cession brings mixed emotions, including immense loss but also optimism.

Russia looks east

The lust for new lands that brought Russia to Alaska and eventually California began in the 16th century, when the country was a fraction of its current size.

That began to change in 1581, when Russia overran a Siberian territory known as the Khanate of Sibir, which was controlled by a grandson of Genghis Khan. This key victory opened up Siberia, and within 60 years the Russians were at the Pacific.

The Russian advance across Siberia was fueled in part by the lucrative fur trade, a desire to expand the Russian Orthodox Christian faith to the “heathen” populations in the east and the addition of new taxpayers and resources to the empire.

In the early 18th century, Peter the Great – who created Russia’s first navy – wanted to know how far the Asian landmass extended to the east. The Siberian city of Okhotsk became the staging point for two explorations he ordered. And in 1741, Vitus Bering successfully crossed the strait that bears his name and sighted Mt. Saint Elias, near what is now the village of Yakutat, Alaska.

Although Bering’s second Kamchatka expedition brought disaster for him personally when adverse weather on the return journey led to a shipwreck on one of the westernmost Aleutian Islands and his eventual death from scurvy in December 1741, it was an incredible success for Russia. The surviving crew fixed the ship, stocked it full of hundreds of the sea otters, foxes and fur seals that were abundant there, and returned to Siberia, impressing Russian fur hunters with their valuable cargo. This prompted something akin to the Klondike gold rush 150 years later.

Challenges emerge

But maintaining these settlements wasn’t easy. Russians in Alaska, who numbered no more than 800 at their peak, faced the reality of being half a globe away from Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the empire, making communications a key problem.

Also, Alaska was too far north to allow for significant agriculture and therefore unfavorable as a place to send large numbers of settlers. So they began exploring lands farther south, at first looking only for people to trade with so they could import the foods that wouldn’t grow in Alaska’s harsh climate. They sent ships to what is now California, established trade relations with the Spaniards there and eventually set up their own settlement at Fort Ross in 1812.

Thirty years later, however, the entity set up to handle Russia’s American explorations failed and sold what remained. Not long after, the Russians began to seriously question whether they could continue their Alaskan colony as well.

For starters, the colony was no longer profitable after the sea otter population was decimated. Then there was the fact that Alaska was difficult to defend, and Russia was short on cash due to the costs of the war in Crimea.

Americans eager for a deal

So, clearly, the Russians were ready to sell, but what motivated the Americans to want to buy?

In the 1840s, the United States had expanded its interests to Oregon, annexed Texas, fought a war with Mexico and acquired California. Afterward, Secretary of State Seward wrote in March 1848:

“Our population is destined to roll resistless waves to the ice barriers of the north, and to encounter oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific.”

Almost 20 years after expressing his thoughts about expansion into the Arctic, Seward accomplished his goal.

In Alaska, the Americans foresaw a potential for gold, fur and fisheries, as well as more trade with China and Japan. The Americans worried that England might try to establish a presence in the territory, and the acquisition of Alaska, it was believed, would help the U.S. become a Pacific power. And overall the government was in an expansionist mode backed by the then-popular idea of “manifest destiny.”

So a deal with incalculable geopolitical consequences was struck, and the Americans seemed to get quite a bargain for their $7.2 million.

Just in terms of wealth, the U.S. gained about 370 million acres of mostly pristine wilderness, including 220 million acres of what are now federal parks and wildlife refuges. Hundreds of billions of dollars in whale oil, fur, copper, gold, timber, fish, platinum, zinc, lead and petroleum have been produced in Alaska over the years – allowing the state to do without a sales or income tax and give every resident an annual stipend. Alaska still likely has billions of barrels of oil reserves.

The state is also a key part of the United States defense system, with military bases located in Anchorage and Fairbanks, and it is the country’s only connection to the Arctic, which ensures it has a seat at the table as melting glaciers allow the exploration of the region’s significant resources.

Impact on Alaska Natives

But there’s an alternate version of this history.

When Bering finally located Alaska in 1741, Alaska was home to about 100,000 people, including Inuit, Athabascan, Yupik, Unangan and Tlingit. There were 17,000 alone on the Aleutian Islands.

Despite the relatively small number of Russians who at any one time lived at one of their settlements – mostly on the Aleutians Islands, Kodiak, Kenai Peninsula and Sitka – they ruled over the Native populations in their areas with an iron hand, taking children of the leaders as hostages, destroying kayaks and other hunting equipment to control the men and showing extreme force when necessary.

The Russians brought with them weaponry such as firearms, swords, cannons and gunpowder, which helped them secure a foothold in Alaska along the southern coast. They used firepower, spies and secured forts to maintain security, and they selected Christianized local leaders to carry out their wishes. They also met resistance, however, such as from the Tlingits, who were capable warriors, ensuring their hold on territory was tenuous.

By the time of the cession, only 50,000 Indigenous people were estimated to be left, as well as 483 Russians and 1,421 Creoles (descendants of Russian men and Indigenous women).

On the Aleutian Islands alone, the Russians enslaved or killed thousands of Aleuts. Their population plummeted to 1,500 in the first 50 years of Russian occupation due to a combination of warfare, disease and enslavement.

When the Americans took over, the United States was still engaged in its Indian wars, so they looked at Alaska and its Indigenous inhabitants as potential adversaries. Alaska was made a military district by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

For their part, Alaska Natives claimed that they still had title to the territory as its original inhabitants and having not lost the land in war or ceded it to any country – including the U.S., which technically didn’t buy it from the Russians but bought the right to negotiate with the Indigenous populations. Still, Natives were denied U.S. citizenship until 1924, when the Indian Citizenship Act was passed.

During that time, Alaska Natives had no rights as citizens and could not vote, own property or file for mining claims. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, in conjunction with missionary societies, in the 1860s began a campaign to eradicate Indigenous languages, religion, art, music, dance, ceremonies and lifestyles.

It was only in 1936 that the Indian Reorganization Act authorized tribal governments to form, and only nine years later overt discrimination was outlawed by Alaska’s Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945. The law banned signs such as “No Natives Need Apply” and “No Dogs or Natives Allowed,” which were common at the time.

Statehood and a disclaimer

Eventually, however, the situation improved markedly for Natives.

Alaska finally became a state in 1959, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act, allotting it 104 million acres of the territory. And in an unprecedented nod to the rights of Alaska’s Indigenous populations, the act contained a clause emphasizing that citizens of the new state were declining any right to land subject to Native title – which by itself was a very thorny topic because they claimed the entire territory.

A result of this clause was that in 1971 President Richard Nixon ceded 44 million acres of federal land, along with $1 billion, to Alaska’s Native populations, which numbered about 75,000 at the time. That came after a Land Claims Task Force that I chaired gave the state ideas about how to resolve the issue.

Today, Alaska has a population of 740,000, of which 120,000 are Natives.

As the United States celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Cession, we all – Alaskans, Natives and Americans of the lower 48 – should salute Secretary of State William H. Seward, the man who eventually brought democracy and the rule of law to Alaska.

This article was first published on March 29, 2017.The Conversation

William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, Visiting Distinguished Professor, University of Alaska Anchorage

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Measles can ravage the immune system and brain, causing long-term damage – a virologist explains

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theconversation.com – Peter Kasson, Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology – 2025-03-31 07:16:00

Measles infections send 1 in 5 people to the hospital.
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Peter Kasson, Georgia Institute of Technology

The measles outbreak that began in west Texas in late January 2025 continues to grow, with 400 confirmed cases in Texas and more than 50 in New Mexico and Oklahoma as of March 28.

Public health experts believe the numbers are much higher, however, and some worry about a bigger resurgence of the disease in the U.S. In the past two weeks, health officials have identified potential measles exposures in association with planes, trains and automobiles, including at Washington Dulles International Airport and on an Amtrak train from New York City to Washington, D.C. – as well as at health care facilities where the infected people sought medical attention.

Measles infections can be extremely serious. So far in 2025, 14% of the people who got measles had to be hospitalized. Last year, that number was 40%. Measles can damage the lungs and immune system, and also inflict permanent brain damage. Three in 1,000 people who get the disease die. But because measles vaccination programs in the U.S. over the past 60 years have been highly successful, few Americans under 50 have experienced measles directly, making it easy to think of the infection as a mere childhood rash with fever.

As a biologist who studies how viruses infect and kill cells and tissues, I believe it is important for people to understand how dangerous a measles infection can be.

Underappreciated acute effects

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases on the planet. One person who has it will infect nine out of 10 people nearby if those people are unvaccinated. A two-dose regimen of the vaccine, however, is 97% effective at preventing measles.

When the measles virus infects a person, it binds to specific proteins on the surface of cells. It then inserts its genome and replicates, destroying the cells in the process. This first happens in the upper respiratory tract and the lungs, where the virus can damage the person’s ability to breathe well. In both places, the virus also infects immune cells that carry it to the lymph nodes, and from there, throughout the body.

YouTube video
Measles can wipe out immune cells’ ability to recognize pathogens.

What generally lands people with measles in the hospital is the disease’s effects on the lungs. As the virus destroys lung cells, patients can develop viral pneumonia, which is characterized by severe coughing and difficulty breathing. Measles pneumonia afflicts about 1 in 20 children who get measles and is the most common cause of death from measles in young children.

The virus can directly invade the nervous system and also damage it by causing inflammation. Measles can cause acute brain damage in two different ways: a direct infection of the brain that occurs in roughly 1 in 1,000 people, or inflammation of the brain two to 30 days after infection that occurs with the same frequency. Children who survive these events can have permanent brain damage and impairments such as blindness and hearing loss.

Yearslong consequences of infection

An especially alarming but still poorly understood effect of measles infection is that it can reduce the immune system’s ability to recognize pathogens it has previously encountered. Researchers had long suspected that children who get the measles vaccine also tend to have better immunity to other diseases, but they were not sure why. A study published in 2019 found that having a measles infection destroyed between 11% and 75% of their antibodies, leaving them vulnerable to many of the infections to which they previously had immunity. This effect, called immune amnesia, lasts until people are reinfected or revaccinated against each disease their immune system forgot.

Occasionally, the virus can lie undetected in the brain of a person who recovered from measles and reactivate typically seven to 10 years later. This condition, called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, is a progressive dementia that is almost always fatal. It occurs in about 1 in 25,000 people who get measles but is about five times more common in babies infected with measles before age 1.

Researchers long thought that such infections were caused by a special strain of measles, but more recent research suggests that the measles virus can acquire mutations that enable it to infect the brain during the course of the original infection.

There is still much to learn about the measles virus. For example, researchers are exploring antibody therapies to treat severe measles. However, even if such treatments work, the best way to prevent the serious effects of measles is to avoid infection by getting vaccinated.The Conversation

Peter Kasson, Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

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Supreme Court considers whether states may prevent people covered by Medicaid from choosing Planned Parenthood as their health care provider

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theconversation.com – Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia – 2025-04-02 17:04:00

Planned Parenthood clinics, like this one in Los Angeles, are located across the United States.
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Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia and Sonia Suter, George Washington University

Having the freedom to choose your own health care provider is something many Americans take for granted. But the Supreme Court is weighing whether people who rely on Medicaid for their health insurance have that right, and if they do – is it enforceable by law?

That’s the key question at the heart of a case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, that began during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

“There’s a right, and the right is the right to choose your doctor,” said Justice Elena Kagan on April 2, 2025, during oral arguments on the case. John J. Bursch, the Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer who is representing South Carolina Director of Health and Human Services Eunice Medina, countered that none of the words in the underlying statute had what he called a “rights-creating pedigree.”

As law professors who teach courses about health and poverty law as well as reproductive justice, we think this case could affect access to health care for 72 million Americans, including low-income people and their children and people with disabilities.

Excluding Planned Parenthood

The case started with Julie Edwards, who is enrolled in Medicaid and lives in South Carolina. After she struggled to get contraceptive services, she was able to receive care from a Planned Parenthood South Atlantic clinic in Columbia, South Carolina.

Planned Parenthood, an array of nonprofits with roots that date back more than a century, is among the nation’s top providers of reproductive services. It operates two clinics in South Carolina, where Medicaid patients can get physical exams, cancer screenings, contraception and other services. It also provides same-day appointments and keeps long hours.

In July 2018, however, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order that barred health care providers in South Carolina that offer abortions from reimbursement through Medicaid.

That meant Planned Parenthood, a longtime target of conservatives’ ire, would no longer be reimbursed for any type of care for Medicaid patients, preventing Edwards from transferring all her gynecological care to that office as she had hoped to do.

Planned Parenthood and Edwards sued South Carolina, claiming that the state was violating the federal Medicare and Medicaid Act, which Congress passed in 1965, by not letting Edwards obtain care from the provider of her choice.

A ‘free-choice-of-provider’ requirement

Medicaid operates as a partnership between the federal government and the states. Congress passed the law that led to its creation based on its power under the Constitution’s spending clause, which allows Congress to subject federal funds to certain requirements.

Two years later, due to concerns that states were restricting which providers Medicaid recipients could choose, Congress added a “free-choice-of-provider” requirement to the program. It states that people enrolled in Medicaid “may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required.”

This provision is at the core of this case. At issue is whether a civil rights statute provides a right for Medicaid beneficiaries to sue a state when their federal rights have been violated. Known as Section 1983, it was enacted in 1871.

Bursch, backed by the Trump administration, argued before the court that the absence of words like “right” in the Medicaid provision that requires states to provide a free choice of provider means that neither Edwards nor Planned Parenthood has the authority to file a lawsuit to enforce this aspect of the Medicaid statute.

Nicole A. Saharsky, Planned Parenthood’s lawyer, argued that the creation of a right shouldn’t depend on “some kind of magic words test.” Instead, she said it was clear that the Medicaid statute created “a right to choose their own doctor” because “it’s mandatory” that the state provide this option to everyone with health insurance through Medicaid.

She also emphasized that Congress wanted to protect “an intensely personal right” to be able “to choose your doctor, the person that you see when you’re at your most vulnerable, facing … some of the most significant … challenges to your life and your health.”

Restricting Medicaid funds

Through a federal law known as the Hyde Amendment, Medicaid cannot reimburse health care providers for the cost of abortions, with a few exceptions: when a patient’s life is at risk or her pregnancy is due to rape or incest. Some states do cover abortion when their laws allow it, without using any federal funds.

Therefore, Planned Parenthood only gets federal Medicaid funds for abortions in those limited circumstances.

McMaster explained that he removed “abortion clinics,” including Planned Parenthood, from the South Carolina Medicaid Program because he didn’t want state funds to indirectly subsidize abortions.

South Carolina “decided that Planned Parenthood was unqualified for many reasons, chiefly because they’re the nation’s largest abortion provider,” Bursch told the Supreme Court.

But only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services nationwide last year were related to abortion. Its most common service is testing for sexually transmitted diseases. Across the nation, Planned Parenthood provides health care to more than 2 million patients per year, most of whom have low incomes.

Man with gray hair in a suit and red tie speaks at a podium.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster speaks to a crowd during an election night party on Nov. 3, 2020, in Columbia.
Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Section 1983

Because the Medicaid statute itself does not allow an individual to sue, Edwards and Planned Parenthood are relying on Section 1983.

Lower courts have repeatedly upheld that the Medicaid statute provides Edwards with the right to obtain Medicaid-funded health care at her local Planned Parenthood clinic.

And the Supreme Court has long recognized that Section 1983 protects an individual’s ability to sue when their rights under a federal statute have been violated.

In 2023, for example, the court found such a right under the Medicaid Nursing Home Reform Act. The court held that Section 1983 confers the right to sue when a statute’s provisions “unambiguously confer individual federal rights.”

Consequences beyond South Carolina

The court’s decision in the Medina case on whether Medicaid patients can choose their own health care provider could have consequences far beyond South Carolina. Arkansas, Missouri and Texas have already barred Planned Parenthood from getting reimbursed by Medicaid for any kind of health care. More states could follow suit.

In addition, given Planned Parenthood’s role in providing expansive contraceptive care, disqualifying it from Medicaid could harm access to health care and increase the already-high unintended pregnancy rate in America.

The ramifications, likewise, could extend beyond the finances of Planned Parenthood.

If the court rules in South Carolina’s favor, states could also try to exclude providers based on other characteristics, such as whether their employees belong to unions or if they provide their patients with gender-affirming care, further restricting patients’ choices.

Or, as Kagan observed, states could go the opposite direction and exclude providers that don’t provide abortions and so forth. What’s really at stake, she said, is whether a patient is “entitled to see” the provider they choose regardless of what their state happens to “think about contraception or abortion or gender transition treatment.”

If the Supreme Court rules that Edwards does have a right to get health care at a Planned Parenthood clinic, the controversy would not be over. The lower courts would then have to decide whether South Carolina appropriately removed Planned Parenthood from Medicaid as an “unqualified provider.”

And if the Supreme Court rules in favor of South Carolina, then Planned Parenthood could still sue South Carolina over its decision to find them to be unqualified.The Conversation

Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia and Sonia Suter, Professor of Law, George Washington University

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Feeling FOMO for something that’s not even fun? It’s not the event you’re missing, it’s the bonding

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theconversation.com – Jacqueline Rifkin, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cornell University – 2025-04-02 07:48:00

They had so much fun without me.
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Jacqueline Rifkin, Cornell University; Barbara Kahn, University of Pennsylvania, and Cindy Chan, University of Toronto

Imagine you’ve planned the trip of a lifetime for your animal-loving family: a cruise to Antarctica with the unique opportunity to view penguins, whales and other rare wildlife. Your adventure-loving kids can kayak through fjords, plunge into icy water and camp under the Antarctic sky.

But rather than being ecstatic, as you anticipated, your kids whine about skipping an after-school scout meeting at a neighbor’s house. Missing this ordinary weekly event triggers such intense FOMO – “fear of missing out” – for them that they don’t want to go on your amazing expedition.

If this kind of debacle sounds familiar to you – or at least if you find it perplexing – you’re not alone. The three of us are marketing professors and social psychologists who focus on how consumers make decisions and how this shapes well-being. We’ve been studying FOMO for over a decade and recently published our work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Over the years, we’ve learned what really drives intense feelings of FOMO – which explains why a run-of-the-mill meeting might feel more crucial than an over-the-top vacation.

FOMO’s real trigger

People use the term FOMO in many different ways. In our research, we focus on a very specific type of FOMO: the kind that occurs when people miss out on events that involve valued social connections.

With this kind of FOMO, we found that the pain of missing out is not related to missing the actual event or opportunity – although that could be there as well. The FOMO we study happens when people miss the chance to bond with friends, co-workers or teammates they care about.

So, the critical part of FOMO is missing out on interactions with people you value. FOMO about a group dinner at a restaurant isn’t really about the food and great lighting. Nor is FOMO about a concert just about the band’s performance. Instead, it’s about the lost opportunity to connect and make memories with people who are important to you.

Why is this upsetting? Imagine the scenario where all your best friends go out to dinner without you. They bond and make lasting memories with each other – and you’re not there for any of it.

If they get closer to each other, where does that leave you? What happens to your social relationships and your sense of belonging? Do you become a less important friend? Less worthy of future invites? Or even kicked out of the group altogether? The anxiety of FOMO can begin to spiral.

People with what psychologists call an anxious attachment style chronically fear rejection and isolation from others. Because FOMO involves anxiety about future social belonging, it may not come as a surprise that people who are naturally more anxious about their friendships tend to get more intense FOMO. When we asked people in one of our studies to scroll social media until they encountered something social they missed, we found that the more anxiously attached a participant was, the more intense FOMO they experienced.

cheerful group laughing together around an outdoor dining table
They’ll always remember that summer cookout – and you weren’t there.
Maskot/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Not just missing Coachella

Getting FOMO for an amazing event you can’t attend makes sense. But if FOMO is less about the event itself and more about the social bonding, what happens when you miss something that’s not really fun at all?

We find that people anticipate FOMO even for unenjoyable missed events. As long as there is some form of missed social bonding, feelings of FOMO emerge. One of our studies found that people anticipated more FOMO from missing an un-fun event that their friends would be at, than a fun event without their friends.

For better or for worse, sad and stressful events can often be emotionally bonding: Going to a funeral to support a friend, cleaning up the mess after a party, or even white-knuckling through a harrowing initiation ceremony can all offer opportunities to forge stronger connections with one another. Stressful contexts like these can be fertile grounds for FOMO.

How to fend off FOMO

Popular discussions about the negative consequences of FOMO tend to focus on the FOMO people feel from compulsively scrolling on social media and seeing what they missed out on. Consequently, much of the suggested advice on how to mitigate FOMO centers on turning off phones or taking a vacation from social media.

Those recommendations may be tough for many people to execute. Plus, they address the symptoms of FOMO, not the cause.

Our finding that the core of FOMO is anxiety about missed social relationships yields a simpler strategy to combat it: Reminding yourself of the last time you connected with close friends may provide a sense of security that staves off feelings of FOMO.

In an experiment testing multiple interventions, we asked 788 study participants to look through their social media feeds until they encountered a post of a missed social event. We asked about 200 of these participants to immediately rate how much FOMO they were feeling. They averaged a 3.2 on a 1-to-7 scale.

Another group of about 200 participants also scrolled through their social media feeds until they encountered a post of a missed social event. But before indicating how much FOMO they were feeling, we asked them to think back to a prior experience socializing and bonding with their friends. Encouragingly, this reflection exercise seemed to curtail FOMO. Their average FOMO rating was 2.7 out of 7, a significant drop.

group of older women on a neighborhood walk with a leashed dog
Reminding yourself about other good times with your pals can help keep FOMO at bay.
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With the remaining participants, we tested other strategies for mitigating FOMO – thinking about the next time they might see their friends or imagining what they’d say to a FOMO-suffering friend – but the simple reflection exercise was by far the most promising.

So, reminding yourself of the meaningful relationships you already have and reaffirming your social belonging in the moment may help combat the rush of anxiety that is characteristic of FOMO.

And missing out on social bonding experiences doesn’t have to be anxiety-provoking. In fact, in our activity-packed, hectic lives, missing some “must-attend” events may be a welcome relief – especially if you remind yourself that your social belonging is not in jeopardy. Cue a recent wave of counter-FOMO programming called JOMO, or “Joy of Missing Out.”

To quote Stuart Smalley, the fictional self-help guru of 1990s “Saturday Night Live,” reminding yourself that “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” might be just the trick to mitigate FOMO.The Conversation

Jacqueline Rifkin, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cornell University; Barbara Kahn, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor of Marketing, University of Pennsylvania, and Cindy Chan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Toronto

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