Fear of missing out, (hereafter referred to as FoMO), is increasingly becoming an issue of concern in relation to the use of Social Network Sites (SNSs). Despite its importance, the effects of FoMO continue to receive limited attention, while guidance on how SNSs design is responsible for developing should and combatting it, remains inadequate. In this position paper, we argue that dual responsibility of SNSs design. We report on initial results of a multiphase empirical study which was undertaken to examine the features of social networks that may contribute to triggering FoMO, and to explore how future SNSs can be designed to aid people manage their FoMO. The study involved three focus group sessions and a diary study. We argue that future SNSs shall support interaction styles and protocols and their agreement and adherence processes to enable people prevent and combat FoMO and present styles for doing that.
Social Network Sites (SNSs) are meant to facilitate interaction between people. The design of SNSs employs persuasive techniques with the aim of enhancing the user experience but also increasing interaction and user retention. Examples include the personalisation of content, temporarily available feeds, and notification and alert features. Socialness is now being embedded in new paradigms such as the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems where devices can link people to each other and increase relatedness and group creation. One of the phenomena associated with such persuasion techniques is the experience of Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). FoMO typically refers to the preoccupation of SNS users with being deprived of interaction while offline. The salience, mood modification and conflict typically experienced as part of FoMO, are symptoms of digital addiction (DA). Despite recognition of the widespread experience of FoMO, existing research focuses on user psychology to interpret it. The contribution of SNS design in triggering FoMO remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we conduct a multi-stage qualitative research including interviews, a diary study and three focus group sessions to explore the relationship between SNS features and FoMO. Our findings demonstrate how the different SNS features act as persuasion triggers for certain kinds of FoMO. Also, we suggest features that could be introduced to social network sites to allow individuals to manage FoMO and identify the principles and challenges associated with engineering them.
Social media provides a platform for information sharing and dissemination and has speedily become a popular method for individuals to relate to others regardless of the time and geographical distance. However, this wealth of connectivity and availability of information may lead to the experience of the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) that typically refers to a preoccupation of the users of social media about lost opportunities when they are offline or unable to connect and communicate as wished. Despite the recognition of the concept, studies around FoMO have used offline data collection techniques such as interviews, focus groups and surveys. This has led to a limited understanding of the lived FoMO experience and a rather simplified and coarse-grained view of the concept. In this paper, we delve into the specifics and nuances of FoMO through multi-stage qualitative research, including interviews, diary study and three focus group sessions and elaborate upon the concept and determine its various manifestations and classification. The lived experience is mainly gathered through a diary study. We present five main classifications characterising FoMO and develop an ecology for it.
Procrastination refers to a voluntary delay of a needed or committed task that might hurt productivity and wellbeing requirements such as self-acceptance, personal growth and positive relations with others. People might procrastinate due to a lack of motivation towards performing a task or a mismatch between the task and their skills. Social Networks Sites (SNS) are designed to provide users with the opportunity to socialise and feel relatedness despite being physically separated. SNSs design is typically equipped with a rich set of persuasive tools to encourage more social interaction. Such tools can entice procrastination when users have low self-regulation ability, and seek avoidance and mood modification. As a first step in designing persuasive features which would help people control their procrastination, there is a need to understand how existing SNS features persuade procrastination in the first place. In this paper, we conduct a multi-stage qualitative study to explore the occurrence of procrastination and the prominent features of SNS design that trigger and facilitate it. We use focus groups to explore SNS procrastination, and then get a more ecologically valid, detailed and in-context data via a ten days' diary study followed by clarification interviews. The findings shed light on prominent types of procrastination and features in SNS design that can persuade and increase, in certain contexts, the chance for procrastination.
Procrastination refers to a voluntary postponement that prevents people from performing their tasks and can hurt productivity and wellbeing. Procrastination might occur due to a lack of motivation to perform tasks or due to the low self-control that people might have over their time and task management. Social Networking Sites (hereafter SNS) are designed to enable their users to engage in online interaction for different purposes such as increasing popularity or exploring information. SNS embed influence and persuasion techniques to attract users which can make them a medium for procrastination where some users fail to maintain a desirable level of self-control over their usage. However, we argue that advances in persuasive technology and gamification techniques can be utilised to augment SMS and help users to regain self-control over their procrastination. Implementing these techniques correctly means that users can still enjoy accessing SNS while maintaining a desirable level of control over their procrastination. Building these antiprocrastination tools, however, is a challenging design activity due to their potential of triggering negative side-effects such as reactance and workarounds, and affecting the overall user experience. In this paper, we conduct user studies, consisting of an exploratory stage using focus groups, diary study and interviews and followed by a design stage based mainly on codesign sessions. Our studies' participants self-declared having a problematic degree of procrastination on SNS, to explore procrastination countermeasure techniques that can augment the future designs of SNS and how best to apply them.
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