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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.