How Fomo – the fear of missing out – affects young people’s binge drinking

Media_Photos/Shutterstock

Past English government campaigns have tried to curb youth drinking by focusing on the things young people might do while drunk and regret later: falling off scaffolding, vomiting or ending up looking a mess.

And while more recent attempts, such as the Spread Campaign in Australia, have tended to be less overtly graphic, they still focus exclusively on harms associated with drinking, such as cancer. They use fear to try and scare people into changing their drinking behaviour.