Identify and explain the key concepts and applications of social media uses in industry, education, and other professional arenas. Identify and synthesize key research literature that discusses current trends, theories, issues, concepts, applications, and effective practices related to a topic in social media and/or computer-mediated communication. Purpose: To explore a topic of choice from one of the research tracks below and describe key research literature that discusses current trends, theories, issues, and concepts, applications, and effective practices related to that topic. Overall task: The student will prepare a research paper that identifies and explores a significant problem or issue in social media. This research paper requires your attention to extensive literature research and synthesis of review. The paper should approximate 15 pages of the main content and without counting the title page or list of References. Topic Selection from Course Tracks for the Research Paper A paper focusing on a specific topic of your choice related to social media is required for this assignment. Your topic should focus on a current research trend and relate to one of the weekly schedule of tracks from the course schedule. The tracks focus on research, application, and effective practices and emerging technological tools in social media. Please see the Detailed Course Schedule for explanation of tracks, but the track titles are: Evolution of Social Media and CMC Technologies UX Content Strategy and Social Media Ecology-Platforms Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) Curating Content, Social Media Metrics/Analytics, Impact and Value Social Media Ethics, Rules of Engagement, and Cyberbullying Social Media and the Digital You: Present and Future Think of the paper as if we were to hold a symposium on social media; using the tracks and the descriptions as potential current research trends, the paper would focus on a specific thread or problem area within that track. To start, pick a track, review the required readings from the track, and in doing so, find a common and consistent topic and problem of interest to develop into a paper. Synthesize the current and most relevant research around that specific topic and problem area. I give some examples below, but please understand these are general areas to help spark your own areas of interest, as you begin to think about the scope of your own topic. For example, from the Evolution of Social Media and CMC Technologies track, you may be interested in delving into the evolution of a specific social media technology (blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks, video, group tool) that has evolved over time to support engagement, sharing, and connecting. You would present the background research on the success (and perhaps non-success, or both) of social media and discuss the scalability of certain platforms or tool(s), having evolved from research on theory and practice. You need to think creatively here not just to write about social media basics and functionality about a particular social media tool, 17 but how the evolution clearly shows a pattern of effective theory and practice. Since social media technologies are evolving still — what is the next generation of social media technology? Another example, from the Curating Content, Social Media Metrics/Analytics, Impact and Value track, you may be interested in delving into how social media drives UX (user experience) content strategy — how is knowledge and information crowd-sourced through social media? How do we distinguish factual information from “fake news” or from “alternative facts” in social media outlets? What is the impact of social media use on equity and diversity? What types of social media metrics (e.g., actions analytics, web analytics, or user buyer or recommender patterns, other) are the most useful or least meaningful to understand the value and impact of social media use in business, industry, or other arenas? Another example, from the Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) track, you may be interested in delving into how people communicate online through social media venues. What aspects do researchers understand about constant connectivity? What challenges do workers face to set workplace and home boundaries with online communication? What boundaries do employers help workers set from working online to respecting workers’ personal space online? (What expectations do employers have about workers using social media?) What new habits (good and/or bad) in human communication (the way people communicate with each other) are being formed via social media use? To what extent do researchers understand the opportunities or pitfalls of online communication that challenge the way people engage, share, and connect? (Remember these are not a string of questions intended for one single paper — each question leads to different angles or topics to delve into understanding the relationship between social media and aspects of computer-mediated communication.) Another example, from the Social Media Ethics, Rules of Engagement, and Cyberbullying track, what research is being done on building awareness of and practicing good ethics in social media? What policies (public, government, workplace, other) need to be put in place to protect people from performing deceptive practices on others or from being victims of deception when using social media? What are the “issues” of cyberbullying? Another example, from the Social Media and the Digital You: Present and Future track, you may be interested in delving into how social media may be impactful in one’s control over their personal privacy. What privacy and security concerns drive social media use, non-use, or user abandonment? What interesting future and futuristic trends are on the horizon for social media? Again, so you can see, I give “examples” of possible topics and focus of topics based on initial readings from the course tracks, but do not let my examples impede your interests or your creative thinking about a trend in social media that you want to delve into! We will have a forum thread on Research Paper Topics so that we can discuss and seek general advice on topic selection and topic focus. 18 Organization of the paper and importance of literature integration The paper must be scholarly and grounded in conceptual coherence (or translate theory or principles) and provide a clear connection to effective practices. To accomplish this you must dig deep into the literature to address an identified problem area — a relevant problem about the topic that serves as the conceptual basis for the paper. In addition, your topic, and the organization of your paper, should start with a title of your paper on a title page and, on a new page, an introduction that describes what the paper is about including, problem definition and research goals or questions (what problem and what issues are you focusing on related to the topic). The remaining part, and most detailed part of the paper, contains an extensive Review of Literature where you are describing in detail the current and most relevant published research about the topic. Essentially, the paper weaves throughout current trends, theories, issues, and concepts, applications, and effective practices related to that topic. In some cases, a depth approach to technological tools that have impacted effective practices and UX strategy would also emerge in the paper. A few more tips about the paper: Once you have selected a topic, you need to focus on a specific problem or issue related to the topic. Besides a title for the work, an introduction should include a clear and compelling problem statement with literature substantiation, a description of the significance of your topic, and what the proposed research paper will cover. Present one or more research questions that will help you organize the conceptual framework for the paper. For example, what is the goal of your paper? Research questions could include questions like, “What are the barriers to constant connectivity in social media? What are the positive outcomes or practical applications of data and analytics in following trends in social media? Be creative with the questions and be sure questions fit the scope of your topic. By giving concrete questions you will achieve two things: you will be able to use these to help you focus throughout the paper, and you will inform the reader (me, the Professor) how the paper will be organized. Current and relevant literature synthesis involves including literature sources (2017- present) to bring support to the discussion in the paper. You must synthesize the literature by comparing and contrasting work presented by the experts in the field of study. The paper must conform to the format guidelines established in the APA Manual 6h or 7th edition. Peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and texts should be used as sources. At least 10-15 references should be used for this paper. Web sites that are only highly professional and peer-reviewed (such as those articles contained in formal online journals and organizational websites) may be cited, but be mindful about this. ONLY USE THOSE ONLINE JOURNALS AND ORGANIZATION CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS LISTED under Acceptable Journals and Conference Proceedings List for Use in Assignments. The entire assignment is worth a possible total of 50 points. Papers will be graded and points awarded for quality of content, depth of content, quality of sources selected, topic focus, current and relevant synthesis, organization, presentation, references style and accuracy, language and style and presentation accuracy, and overall quality of writing. 19 IMPORTANT!!! The articles that you select to review for Assignment #1 can be used as literature material to integrate into your research paper for Assignment #2! So, be sure to carefully consider the article selection for Assignment #1 and Assignment #2 so that you can leverage your work in this course! Don’t forget to see the section on Basic Requirements for All Assignments. “General” Format for the Research Paper: Title page: including title of paper, author full name, full contact information, course number. Beginning on page 2: Title of paper — short, but descriptive Abstract – no more than 100 words summarizing the paper Keywords — to help search optimization on the topic Introduction Includes problem statement and research questions Review of Literature –Here is where you give a thorough synthesis of the literature and deep examination of the issues. Use section headings as appropriate to maintain organization as you may be shifting or advancing several issues on the topic. Conclusions – What new research lies ahead for this topic? Reference List End of Assignment #2, Option #2 Instructions
Fear of Missing Out using Social Media
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Abstract
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a widely referenced phenomenon, especially in today’s connected world. Social media has capitalized on machine learning algorithms to propel the fear of missing out phenomenon. This paper explores the positive and negative effects of FOMO drawing from the belongingness, reasoning, and social cognitive theory. Through a concise and precise literature review, the author expounds on the link between the positive and practical implications of the FOMO social construct when adopted and utilized in various social media platforms. In the future, the research could entail how and why psychological issues cause fear of missing out.
Keywords: Fear of missing out, Belongings’ theory, Reasoning theory, Social cognitive theory, Social media, Machine learning algorithms
Fear of Missing Out using Social Media
Introduction
Social media has become a haven for marketers due to the massive inflow of information. Businesses are exploring various social media platforms to employ persuasive techniques to increase user engagement and retention. Recently there has been a drastic shift in market design, especially with the advent of globalization and knowledge-based economies. Social media has been hunting ground for the company to crowdsource data on consumer preference, consumption rate, product features, usage, market penetration, and segmentation. These techniques hypothesize the fear of missing out as an optimal construct for advertising and marketing. Similarly, it is formidable to compute the mechanisms and models adopted in social media platforms to enhance user experience and trigger human action.
Any comprehensive account of how social media influences user experience involves a conglomeration of crowdsourced usage, digital context, prior knowledge, and gratifications. It consists of a compilation of real-time data, cognitive behaviors, social media trends, and scaling information sharing intentions. For decades social media sites, developers’ main focus has been improving user experience and converting users to potential clients Hornbæk, K., & Hertzum (2017,1). Today, social media professionals have leveraged on user-generated social media information to deconstruct the interactions between product features and user engagement. The features consist of the integration of machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to enhance human-computer communications.
Cruz-Benito et al., (2017, 2252) recent work explore user experience through user characteristics and the inherent benefits of optimizing machine learning logarithm to develop adaptive solutions. Social media computes the provisional development, production, and consumption of all news rendered in the platforms to shape and curate the content to meet the users’ needs. Application of machine learning algorithms creates a user-centric design based on the user profile, behavior, preferences, and likings. It optimizes them to improve the system as well as content features. A consumer-centric design provides rich insights to social media stakeholders. As a result, businesses and companies can manipulate and curate social media content that invokes human action. Following the continuous extraction of visual and textual data with context-related variables and features, it is easy to structure statistical models that curate content features and increase user engagements.
Improving user performance and satisfaction increases users’ online presence and socialness, thus forming trends that transcend to cultures. Consequently, there will be a high prevalence for people to associate with certain brands, products, and content, which simultaneously elevates fear of missing out that is linked to social media use. Drawing from belongingness hypothesis theory, human beings have the innate desire to belong, which increases social media use, which is associated with fear of missing out (Roberts & David, 2020, 386). Increased preoccupation with online technology has both positive and negative effects on one’s behavior. For instance, fear of missing can boost social medial marketing and campaigns as well as encourage problematic behaviors such as addiction and obsessive social media usage (Alutaybi, 2019, 3758).
Problem Statement
The main problem outlined in this paper is the ability to balance the scales of positive and negative affectivity of FOMO on psychological wellbeing and social media use. Social media is an extensive network of websites, applications, and systems with a friendly interface for users to create and share content across the world. Social media professionals are bombarded with enormous information that enables interactions and engagement, which translates to opinions, cultures, and ideas. The visual and textual content can be filtered, manipulated, and curated to fit the market design parameters, promote the users’ narrative, and reach the value ranks in the web (Epstein, 2017, 2).
This is a common phenomenon, especially in the political and business arena, mainly because internal and external influencing the political and economic climate, companies, and political parties curate content to favor certain political ideologies or brands. Through machine learning algorithms and search engine optimization, social media professionals can manipulate data to influence voting and purchasing behavior. In today’s digitally connected world, introducing the ranking bias can actively impact non-users by evoking fear of missing out phenomenon. As a result, the filter bubble can potentially change the decision of an unprecedented number of people on a national or global scale.
Recent research shows that the high diffusion rate of automated content and the overdependence on ranking manipulation will trigger psychological rewards influenced by certain political ideologies and businesses and dependent on human-generated algorithms on an unprecedented scale and unexpected way. For instance, today, automated web content can alter the decision and voting preferences of a noticeable 20 % of undecided voters on social media platforms. Similarly, machine learning algorithms have a positive and direct effect on candidates’ race and gender biases in the online job market. A comprehensive review of the machine algorithm procedure shows many search engines have been programmed to rank the preferences based on user-generated text (Mathur, 2019, 2).
Further research shows the unprecedented ways in which the filter bubble influences user’s attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs as well the online vulnerability and susceptibility due to the user’s lack of knowledge on the ranking manipulation on the Newsfeed (Epstein, 2017, 2). As a result, there has been a growing concern by social media professionals, content creators, regulators, and users over the massive social and psychological heuristics embedded in today’s digital world. Following the enormous growth of social media users and the rapid development of new and advanced social media features, the future impacts of these heuristics are unfathomable. Mainly because of the limited literature on the algorithm filter despite extensive integration by search engine companies. Although machine learning requires a lot of technical knowledge and comprehension, search engine companies should make this information available to the public. The lack of a clear definition of automated content makes it difficult for consumers to distinguish between clickbait and real content (Elhai. 2018, 290).
Significance of the Research
This research will be imperative in understanding the far-reaching impact of algorithm filters on how users and social media professionals perceive Newsfeeds. The insights gathered will help reduce social media consumption’s intensity, which is the primary cause of fear of missing out linked addiction and social media fatigue. This knowledge will also create awareness and help regulators and educators develop adaptive solutions to mitigate ranking manipulation. More broadly, this research will build on existing literature that facilitates the accountability and transparency of algorithm filters. Through a concise and precise literature review, the author expounds of the intimate linkage between the favorable and practical implications of the FOMO social construct when adopted and utilized in various social media platforms. Therefore this article will theorize the fear of missing out (FOMO) phenomenon based on the following question.
Research Question
What are the positive or practical implications of the FOMO phenomenon?
Literature Review
Current FOMO situation
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a widely referenced phenomenon, especially in today’s connected world. User experience studies define FOMO as the “pervasive apprehension that others might be having a rewarding experience from which one is absent” (Elhai et al., 2018, 290). The robust and rapid advancement in online technology and the integration of human-generated text exacerbate social media interactions, influencing the fear of missing out. Fear of missing out is a controversial phenomenon that has spurred hot debates across many arenas. Following the 2016 US elections, there has been an enhancement in the discussion about the role that fear of missing out in the polls(Epstein et al., 2017, 1).
Fear of missing out thrives on the ability to consume generate, distribute, and swap ideas in the virtual community and the networks provided by various applications. In today’s society, social media professionals capitalize on the fear of missing out to make sales, reach out to potential customers, and connect with people. According to Stead& Bibbly (2017, 535), fear of missing out depends on the person’s overall emotional mood, state of existing relationships, and physical wellbeing. Therefore, the fear of missing out has far-reaching effects on social media users’ lives. The main intention of this research is to offer a holistic outlook of the implication of fear missing out on the psychological and general wellbeing of social media users. Many scholars argue that fear of missing out has a positive and significant effect on social media campaigns, activation, and brand awareness.
However, social media regulators argue that FOMO is a problematic issue that aids and promotes negative psychological behavior that leads to obsessive social media use or addiction. Recent works conducted by Elhai et al. (2018, 290) show a positive association between fear of missing out and psychopathology-related behaviors and adverse effects on problematic phone issues based on race, gender, and sex. Fear of missing out poses substantial challenges due to the rapidly changing digital world. Elhai et al., (2018, 291) opines that fear of missing out has similar preferential scalability with the type of device. The study indicated an unprecedented increase in the social media construct following the advancement of digital tools and features (Jungselius & Weilenmann, 2018, 230). To test the validity of the negative implications of FOMO, Buglass, et al., (2017, 249) expounds on the vulnerability and susceptibility of users on social networking sites. According to research, many Scholars categorize fear of missing out as a social construct exacerbated by obsessive online interactions.
However, academic research has solely focused on the fear of missing out as a personal trait initiated by individual psychological triggers such as low self-esteem leading to individual-acquired FOMO driven behaviors. Despite the little research available on an academic viewpoint, extensive research exists from a marketing and advertising perspective, which aids in narrowing the gap between the compulsive social media engagement and sales. From a market-centric perspective, fear of missing out is an optimal tool to initiate and convert users to customers. Although businesses have co-opted the problematic social constructs for commercial use, it is explicitly a crucial subject because FOMO sales rely on users’ responses. As a result, scholars have started the first-ever human-computer interaction research to study user adaptability and response mechanism to align the audience with the content focusing on market-centric FOMO appeal (Stead & Bibby, 2017, 535).
This ongoing research forms a strong foundation for future research and develops a compatible framework with FOMO. It also sets the direction for policy formulation on response elements, triangulates data on usage and application of gratification, and social cognitive theories that shape the FOMO construct. Currently, the findings and results have been imposed on the commerce industry. This has had an impact on other related such as education and other professional arenas that exploring strategies to leverage on FOMO.
FOMO and Psychological behaviors in rural and urban areas
Many people tend to underestimate the implications of fear of missing out since it is often defined as a social construct affecting the isolated or people dealing with psychological issues such as depression. However, social media is an evitable tool that connects people from all walks of life irrespective of their location. On the contrary, little literature exists on the impact and effects of social media integration in these isolated issues. With the rapid growth of global virtual communities co-owned by people across the globe, FOMO has become the driving force for people to belong and feel like part of a group. In the recent past, there has been a drastic upsurge in social media users in rural areas due to the fear of being left out by urban dwellers. A study conducted by Given et al., (2017), shows that a significant percentage of people in remote areas solely use Facebook and Twitter to build networks, strengthen existing connections, advertise their businesses, interact with like-minded people and tell their stories online. This striking characteristics and qualities between urban users and rural users show the innate potential of social media use in both settings to evoke fear of missing out. With this knowledge, it is possible to locate FOMO’s positive and negative implications in the rural and urban setup.
Although there exist little anecdotes on the way, social media bridges the communication gaps between city dwellers and people in remote areas. The desire to stay digitally connected in remote regions shows a worrying trend that does not reflect social good. Most of the existing research focuses on the effectiveness of online technology as a medium of communication rather than a tool that forms social constructs. There is minimal literature about users’ behavior, attitude, and beliefs, as well as the primary cause of the fear of missing out phenomena. The lived reality of social media use across many rural areas is not well documented. In recent years, researchers have embarked on conducting extensive studies to emphasize the existing adverse effects of social media in all aspects of life. For instance, Scholars at the University of California, Berkeley conducted extensive research about the emotional impact of using social media on a real-time basis (Panger, 2018, 4). The researchers focused on examining the actual emotions experienced in live interaction and how these emotions have the potential to alter behavior. They sought to deconstruct the rhetoric of the neurochemical brain rewards and the positive contagious effect. Browsing through social media increases dopamine levels making one feel relieved and happy.
The study also analyzed the negative affectivity in terms of distraction and social media fatigue from constant and frequent live status updates. Scrolling through social media can have harmful effects on both the body and mind. Social comparison is within the purview of some researchers as a negative impact of social media. It mentions that the friend’s effort to showcase happy and fulfilled lives may make us feel bad about our lives. Other researchers argue that social comparison is propelled by fear of missing out as people continuously want to see what their friends are doing. However, another group of researchers strongly believe that scrolling through social media improves one’s morale and helps us remain positive (Panger 2018, 1).
Concurrently there is broader literature on the positive and negative impacts of constant and frequent notifications popups from social networking sites. Pielot & Rello (2017, 1) hypothesize that notifications play an important role in users’ high affinity to fear missing out. These persuasive techniques cause distraction, thus affecting users’ retention capacity and concentration span. Following the same line of thought, these researchers have conceptualized on the reasoning and gratification theories that evoke the fear of missing out phenomena. The general mood swings, self-doubt, anxiety, and nervousness accompanied by FOMO form the foundational symptoms of social media addiction and other obsessive behaviors such as social media fatigue, envy, social comparison, anger management issues, and lack of self-control. From a psychological approach, FOMO alters the individual variability of social media users ranging from users’ personal preferences, traits to social media obligations.
Positive implications of FOMO
The constant viewing of friends’ status updates arouses the neurochemical transmitters that allow the brain to register positive emotions. Researchers argue that most social media users browse through social platforms just not out of social obligation or fear of missing out, but because they find it interesting. According to a survey conducted by Panger (2018, 6), approximately 80% of Facebook users stated they log in to Facebook to read and learn from other people’s experiences and stories. To some extent, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are known to induce the line of thoughts, enhance strategic thinking, boost imagination and creativity, and increase problem-solving skills due to exposure to difficult tasks and challenges.
Following Panger (2018, 2), a survey some researchers propose that viewing friends’ posts on social media with a positive mindset, improve concentration, and builds higher self-esteem. It also activates a greater sense of purpose. People pay a significant amount of attention to small details and analyze all ideas and thoughts as they are exposed to different scenes. The positive emotional contagion flow plays an integral role in lowering boredom; it gives one a sense of power, equally building self-confidence as the user is always in control. According to a study conducted by Aranda & Baig, (2018, 19; 3) shows the continuum development of healthy social media use habits across users in the United States and Switzerland. The study utilized cross-sectional and longitudinal designs to show the actualization of healthy disconnection, the limitation, and the restrictions accompanied by the whole experience (Aranda & Baig, 2018, 19; 3). Besides, most social media platforms allow users to curate the newsfeed to match his/her interests and passions. Exposure to such options arouses positive emotions that are evident in the users to day to day activities. Also, constant and frequent social media use keeps the user update with the latest social media tools and features. Lastly, using social media for fun rather than social obligation helps users form thriving virtual communities that build on the interest of the users (Panger, 2018, 5).
Negative implications of FOMO
Social media has made it increasingly possible to access a wide range of offline and online social activities. Users in fear of missing out bubble find social media participation enticing and attractive. Social media presents an opportunity and avenue for users with high affinity for FOMO to receive live updates of what is happening around the globe (Westin & Chiasson, 2019, 57).
However, research shows a direct and positive link between FOMO that is subjective to psycho-related behaviors and the general wellbeing of social media users. Psychological health and wellbeing are linked to FOMO, and social media engagement in two distinct ways. Individuals with low self-esteem or other psychological needs dissatisfaction may gravitate towards high social media to fill the need deficit since, in today’s society, social connections are an evitable aspect of life. Also, there is an indirect and significant relationship between basic needs and social media use linked by way of FOMO. Filling the emotional gap could be the genesis of increased affinity to social media, which eventually gravitates to FOMO. Following this line of thought, researchers purport that social media engagement is dependent on FOMO in so far as it is linked to need satisfaction. The desire to stay continuously connected is potentially dangerous as it encourages people to check notification amidst other activities or when operating machines. Also, researchers highlight how mixed fear of missing out and social media use to form the basis for unfulfilled lives coupled with general feelings of unhappiness.
Lyngs (2020, 1) opines that fear of missing out is a source of negative feelings and thoughts of nervousness, that locks one in a constant state of self-doubt after every social engagement. Preliminary research on social media usage highlights how online technology manipulates users’ psychological factors to control their online behavior. In other words, digital technology leverages users’ loneliness, dissatisfaction with existing relationships, and boredom to shape the culture of problematic social media interactions. From this perspective, social media is considered an outlet for social and emotional need deficits, despite the continuous ranking manipulation and violation of users’ privacy to keep them hooked to the fear of missing out phenomenon. Also, social media offers myriad ways in which fear of missing out links individual variability in factors such as self-esteem, general life satisfaction, psychological dissatisfaction, and overall mood to social media interactions. The use of social factors and online features to influence redundant psychosocial behavior boosts many social constructs dependent on dark web patterns (Westin & Chiasson, 2019, 57).
Conclusion
The literature in this study surpasses previous research that only defined fear of missing as a social construct. The study provides evidence of tested facts and theories that have been documented in scholarly journals for human-computer interactions and user studies over the last three years. Although we believe this study exhausts the positive and practical implications of fear of missing out, there is a need to conduct more investigations on the empirical and theoretical nature of fear of missing out, especially with the continuous development of social media tools and features. In the future, researchers should utilize experimental studies and techniques to draw conclusions based on primary sources. More extensive literature is required to provide empirical and theoretically grounded facts on how social media is linked to fear of missing out. Researchers should endeavor to collect data from social media users to interpret the observations of the attributes emerging from the sample population to understand the broader population. In this light, the researchers will seek to build a rapport with the research participants and ensure that they offer relevant information.
Poushter, Bishop, and Chwe, (2018, 5), states that to develop a clear understanding of any research, prompt researchers must delve into the topic without bias to collect viable and valid information on the phenomenon. It is of paramount importance that social media professionals understand how users synthesize and interpret information to boost user performance and satisfaction. On one account, there are the trends, theories, and concepts embellished on the various social media networks that form the stickiness factor.
While on the other hand, persuasive techniques fuel users’ eagerness and pressure to conform, this simultaneously leads to fear of missing out. Broader research is needed on the real-time emotional experienced when browsing throughout social media and the far-reaching effects of fear of missing out—focusing on continuous integration of notifications and popups across all social networking sites. Social media regulators endeavor to theorize the question. Do the users gain the need satisfaction immediately they login to social media? Although few studies exist, it is crucial to building the conceptual framework to achieve viability and validity of social media engagement’s live reality. To bridge this gap, researchers need to analyze the level of concentration before and after browsing, the scale of positive emotional arousal, and sense of social need satisfaction, such as loneliness and anxiety levels.
More broadly, social media is an ever-changing body that requires massive investigations ranging from users’ individual preferences, traits to social media obligations. There is a need to delve deep into the psychological issues that cause user gravitation to fear missing out. Furthermore, social media studies have emphasized the preliminary review of the dynamics of social media dependency from the point of first interaction to the experience of fear of missing out. Analysis of fear of missing out from this perspective will provide rich insights that resonate with the continuously evolving body of work on social media engagement. Social media researchers should also seek ways to alleviate the growing social media dependency. With the help of social media researchers, social psychologists should use provisional statistics on psychological needs and newly found insights to build on existing literature, which will help understand the most prevalent psychological needs linked to fear of missing out. As a result, they will be able to build adaptive solutions to redress the growing concern for need dissatisfaction. Also, since the above study focuses on the overall social media user, more studies should be conducted on specific platforms such as Twitter Facebook, Instagram. It is increasingly important to break down the social media engagement across different platforms to understand the preferential scalability as well as the specific persuasive features and techniques employed by various platforms to features to evoke fear of missing out.
Additionally, it is essential to broaden research on the joint effects of social media on various age groups. It is evident that in today’s world, most individuals ascribe to the digital world. Although not everyone is well-versed in applying this form of technology, especially the aged in society, a significant portion of the world’s population comprises young individuals, who are the primary social media users. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have increased popularity due to the ability to promote interaction among individuals. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the positive and negative effects of FOMO on different age groups in society. Lastly, researchers propose that social media professionals conduct extensive research on the viability of the fear of missing out as a marketing and advertising tool. With the ongoing market segmentation, branding, and market-centric designs, the commerce industry must adopt viable marketing strategies that are mindful of the wellbeing user’s wellbeing.
In today’s society, social media usage has drastically improved due to the substantial paradigm shift from TV viewership and radio listening. Consequently, there is a growing concern for the holistic effect of social media on the users. For the better part, this paper points out the multifaceted implications of social media users’ psychological and general wellbeing. The study further states the emerging social constructs emanating from social media engagement and its impacts on all aspects of life. With continuous studies, it is possible to deconstruct the effects of social media on youthful generation, lifestyle, political and educational awareness, trends, education process, and social life. Social media is a diverse network that harbors a wide range of topics that we cannot exhaust. Still, with continuous research, we can use understand the far-reaching implications of social constructs to use them for social good. We believe the work presented here will be the basis to stimulate and set the direction for further research into this evolving phenomenon.
References
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