Monotony of social networking among millennial and its effect on social advertisement: a challenge to digital marketers

This study aims to investigate an initial understanding about the different factors that are inducing and stemming the monotony of different social networking sites (SNSs). Specifically, the study provides an initial understanding for the liking/disliking of different SNSs, factors affecting users’ monotony and its impact on the success and effectiveness of different marketing activities.

A survey questionnaire was adopted from previously developed and validated scales. The questionnaire was administered to undergraduate students enrolled in different universities in India. We have used regression analysis, bootstrapping technique, Sobel test and ANOVA to address the research questions and hence to test the hypotheses.

The findings of the study revealed that gender does not have any impact on the monotony of SNSs. Both genders are experiencing boredom for SNSs and spend less time on such sites. Moreover, SNS boredom negatively impacts users’ attitudes toward different SNSs such as Facebook, twitter, etc., which in turn develop negative attitudes toward the different advertisement on these sites. This study revealed the marketers’ necessity of studying the phenomenon of SNS boredom. One of the most important finding of this study is that users’ age decides the level of monotony/boredom with the social sites; older users report significantly lower levels of social sites boredom as compared to younger users.

To capture the opinion of SNS users, this study used a sample of students from different universities. The study findings are primarily based on studies utilizing millennial population.

This is the first study which empirically examines the phenomenon of social networking boredom among millennial by linking the theories of monotony, i.e. gratification theory. The findings of the study added a chapter in the literature by identifying the underlying mechanism through which monotony of SNS impacts effectiveness of the social media marketing activities. The findings shed more light on the consequences of SNS monotony for the digital marketers and revealed that age is an important factor in it.