Is my fear of missing out (FOMO) causing fatigue? Advertising, social media fatigue, and the implications for consumers and brands

Abstract

Purpose Social media usage has become ubiquitous in our society – consumers are spending upwards of 20 percent of their media time on social sites interacting with friends, family and brands (Adler, 2016) and all of this usage is driving fatigue. The purpose of this paper is to examine how advertising factors such as attitude and intrusiveness impact social media fatigue as well as two consumer behavior factors, fear of missing out (FOMO) and privacy. Design/methodology/approach A 190-item questionnaire was developed and administered to an opt-in subject pool recruited for web-based research (i.e. online panel). A representative sample of 750 US social media users was recruited for the survey of which 518 respondents were valid and usable. Findings Results indicate that FOMO has the greatest impact on social media fatigue, not advertising factors as predicted. In addition, privacy concerns continue to plague consumers and should be monitored by advertisers. Research limitations/implications With regard to limitation, the survey contained a variety of self-reported measures that can tend to be under-reported, especially when it comes to social media usage as evidenced in a recent study (Adler, 2016). Originality/value This research undertook an investigation of consumer perceptions of social media advertising and how those relate to social media fatigue and psychological factors such as privacy and FOMO. In looking at these constructs, a clearer picture of how consumer perceptions of advertising impact levels of social media fatigue has emerged. In addition, the results provide a better understanding of FOMO, a psychological factor that significantly contributes to social media fatigue.

Fear of Missing Out Scale – A Nationwide Representative CAWI Survey in Poland

“…The results of this study support other representative surveys (Hampton et al, 2016;Reinecke et al, 2017;Bright & Logan, 2018) in the aspect of presenting FOMO as one of the inherent features of social media users, increasing their stress and discomfort. Just like in other surveys, the need for belongingness is very important, especially for the youngest respondents, and results in permanent compulsory checking of social media feeds.…”

FOMO, Brands and Consumers – about the Reactions of Polish Internet Users to the Activities of Brands in Social Media (Based on CAWI Representative Research)

“…Exceptions include one of the three stages of the studies carried out by A.K. Przybylski et al [2013], comprehensive research done in Germany [Reinecke et al, 2017] and in the USA [Hampton et al, 2016;Bright & Logan, 2018]. Polish studies on the phenomenon are therefore one of only a few worldwide.…”

Adaptation of fear of missing out scale (FoMOs): Turkish version validity and reliability study

“…As mentioned above, previous research has pointed out that the factors affecting FoMO and the variables affected by FoMO have been studied extensively. For example, FoMO has been associated with intensive social media use, such as social networking addiction (Blackwell, Leaman, Tramposch, Osborne, & Liss, 2017;Kuss & Griffiths, 2017;Tomczyk & Selmanagic-Lizde, 2018;Wang et al, 2018), the amount of stress experienced when using social networking sites (Beyens, Frison, & Eggermont, 2016), use of mobile phones while driving/ learning (Przybylski et al, 2013), social media fatigue (Bright & Logan, 2018), decreased self-esteem (Buglass, Binder, Betts, & Underwood, 2017), poor sleep (Adams et al, 2016), college maladjustment (Alt, 2018), smartphone addiction (Wolniewicz, Tiamiyu, Weeks, & Elhai, 2018), neuroticism (Blackwell et al, 2017), depression (Elhai, Levine, Dvorak, & Hall, 2016), anxiety (Blackwell et al, 2017;Elhai et al, 2016), and negative alcohol-related consequences (Riordan, Flett, Hunter, Scarf, & Conner, 2015).…”