How Can Social Networks Design Trigger Fear of Missing Out?

Abstract

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.

Combating Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) on Social Media: The FoMO-R Method

“…Previous research [ 2 , 18 , 19 ] has identified five primary contexts of use where FoMO occurs, the fears associated with them and the potential technical countermeasures. The findings are summarised in Table 1 .…”

“…These studies developed five primary contexts of use in which FoMO occurs and the specific fears in each context [ 2 ]. The same authors explored features of social media that could facilitate FoMO and, in addition, the existing and future social media features that alleviate FoMO [ 18 , 19 ].…”

“…It is hoped that this might build the users’ digital resilience and help them to prevent and deal with certain kinds of FoMO. We used the results of previous research in [ 2 , 18 , 19 ] to devise the main components of FoMO-R and added to them, particularly at the level of social countermeasures. We evaluate the potential of the method empirically through focus groups and a diary study involving 30 participants.…”

Managing Procrastination on Social Networking Sites: The D-Crastinate Method

“…Setting others’ expectations can be achieved by declaring some information regarding user’s availability, or the tasks that users are currently performing, and making those situations transparent to peers. Confirming the availability time can also reduce the fear of missing out (FoMO) where users fear being ignored or excluded [ 7 , 20 ]. Being transparent can inspire and create trust between users and provide an excuse to avoid interacting with others during the unavailability time.…”

“…Therefore, the distracting notification can be considered an external factor that could invoke and facilitate procrastination. Moreover, the design features of social networking sites (SNS) could facilitate procrastination in numerous cases such as users who instantly reply to messages to develop a positive self-image or because of the fear of missing out [ 7 , 8 ]. It has been suggested that procrastination is a trait that is determined by underlying personality factors [ 9 ].…”