This is a note to self in the form of a blog post. Compulsive use of social media is often explained through the phenomenon of FOMO — the fear of missing out on (or being late in finding out) some important information, which would lead to social disadvantage. But I’ve often wondered whether this compulsion can be neutralised with a “counter-FOMO” of sorts by considering the original thoughts one might not have, and the valuable real-world experiences one might be blind to, when one’s cognitive function is overwhelmed by the almost-ubiquitous dark patterns of social media and immobilised by the resulting attention residue. These opportunity costs are harder to quantify than missed likes or feed updates, and as such, they are more nebulous counterfactuals. I’d like to know if there are good proxy measures that could help answer this question.