Partners
- Future in Perspective (Ireland) – coordinator
- Social Youth Development Civil (Greece)
- Solution: Solidarity & Inclusion (France)
- Skills Elevation (Germany)
- Embaixada da Juventude (Portugal)
- INNEO (Poland) Backslash (Spain)
What is NOMO FOMO about?
The research study “Social Inclusion, Digitalisation and Young People” produced by the European Union-Council of Europe Youth Partnership and published in April 2020 states that “digitalisation, as a transformative process of integrating digital technologies into everyday life is continuously shaping our society, and it has been recognised to have significant impact on the youngest generations. It is accelerated by new technologies and has a high social and economic impact.
As a social phenomenon, digitalisation may support or hinder the efforts necessary to achieve social inclusion” and partners believe that Fear Of Missing Out presents a significant barrier to digital inclusion, which is a key element of social inclusion for today’s digital native youth across Europe. The ECDL Foundation (2015) highlights that “young people do not inherently possess the skills for safe and effective use of technologies, and skills acquired informally are likely to be incomplete”. Consequently, there are serious gaps in addressing the digital skills inadequacies and providing young people with the necessary skills, knowledge and attitudes that would enable them to minimise the risks and maximise the benefits of participation in an online world.
The NOMO FOMO project proposes ‘unpacking’ the term FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to see what lies beneath and provide a toolkit of interactive learning resources to address the elements identified. In a survey with young people the following themes were commonly identified in all partner countries as being the basis for FOMO anxiety. Fear of being unpopular; uninteresting; unattractive; unworthy; unfriendly; unkind; uncaring; are just a sample of the 12 most common themes that emerged. Addressing these themes, partners piloted NOMO FOMO outputs in 7 local settings where the partners are based.
Objectives
The NOMO FOMO project:
– Supports the capacity building of youth workers and in youth work;
– Promotes intercultural dialogue and strengthen knowledge and acceptance of diversity in society;
– Opens up youth work to cross-sectorial cooperation with mental health service providers allowing greater synergies across all fields of actions concerning young people;
– Eases transition of young people from youth to adulthood;
– Promotes and aims at engaging, connecting and empowering young people in their social media lives to support positive mental health;
– Fosters volunteering among young people through the peer leadership programme proposed;
– Increases social inclusion of all young people, taking into account the underlying European values, and supports them to manage their online interactions appropriately;
– Enhances critical thinking and media literacy among young people to strengthen democracy and fight manipulation, propaganda and fake news which often negatively impacts mental
health;
– Strengthens young people’s sense of initiative, notably in social media environments encouraging them to take control of the social media environments.
Resources
First of all, the NOMO FOMO consortium partners has created 12 interactive infographics each one addressing one of the key themes associated with FOMO anxiety and stress which directly impact mental health. Each individual interactive infographic resource comprises a series of 4 different but related learning elements. Each element has clear learning outcomes to be achieved. The elements of each interactive infographic includes:
1. An ‘explainer’ video that introduces the specific theme
2. An interactive quiz or puzzle to ensure that learners have a real understanding of the selected theme
3. An Online Digital Breakout – a challenge-based learning resource that will comprise up to 4 individual challenges to build awareness of the specific theme being addressed and how to deal with it
4. A call to action – this element will be used to demonstrate to learners what they can do themselves to deal with the specific FOMO theme addressed.
Then, partners developed an In-service training programme for front-line youth workers with two specific elements:
1. Unpacking FOMO – this element focuses on building awareness of the key themes identified by Gen Zers themselves as being the basis for FOMO anxiety and stress.
2. Digital skills – this element supports youth workers in developing their skills and competences to create their own interactive infographic resources using identified software programmes.
Then, partners will develop a Peer Leadership Training Programme aiming at empowering young people to develop positive behaviours and habits that will support their positive mental health. It is critically important especially in the face of the wide-ranging youth mental health issues we are witnessing today and particularly those associated with social media engagement.
Moreover, partners created a Smartfeed Training Programme to equip youth workers and young people with a toolbox of resources to help them evolve from passive social media users into active, selective ones. Rather than allowing the algorithms to force-feed controversial posts, young people are shown how to ‘prune’ their newsfeeds and retrain the algorithms so that their social media content becomes closer to that which they decide to see rather than that which the social media platforms decide they should see.
Finally, partners created the NOMO FOMO MOOC that provides access to the interactive infographics and all other learning resources developed and has all the features of a MOOC. Access to the educational resources is free and the content generated by the NOMO FOMO consortium are published as open educational resources so they can be reused by others.
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