No Ads, No Facebook: How Social Media Fatigue Threatens Social Media's Business Model

By Collin Yoxall

With the advent of Web 2.0, a new phenomenon started to appear on the Internet: social media. In addition to allowing for an unprecedented connection across the world, social media has allowed advertisers an unprecedented level of audience targeting. The social media platforms have benefited from increased advertising revenue. Users have benefited from social media advertising through a personalized advertising experience relevant to their interests and needs. 

However, recent debates around privacy and the power of social media have cooled the world's love affair with social media. The result has been lower advertising revenue and user engagement, along with increasing regulatory oversight. With these threats already a reality for social media operators, platforms face another risk from social media fatigue (SMF). 

SMF, according to Yonsei University, is defined as "a subjective and self-evaluated feeling of tiredness from SNS usage.” It is also a tendency by social media users "to pullback from social media when they become overwhelmed" by social media's features and pressures, in the words of Techopedia. The theoretical foundations of SMF lie in previous theories around limits to information processing, acceptance of technology by users, and “stressor-strain outcomes.”

The first reports of social media fatigue began in 2011. The term came to be when researchers from Gartner used the phrase to describe the results of a survey, which found 25% of respondents were using social media less than when they joined social media. Years before the privacy scandals that currently engulf the industry, the Gartner study found that a third of respondents had concerns around social media and privacy.

SMF may pose a threat to the relationship between the revenue platforms rely on and the system of advertising that brands have become used to. The fear is that SMF is caused by the overwhelming amount of information users are asked to process by social media, leading users to have trouble processing advertising or to stop paying attention to ads altogether. 

To explain how SMF threatens advertising on social media, we first have to look at what research says is effective advertising and how that translates into the social media age.

One of the seminal pieces of research on effective advertising defined it as a "subjective evaluation of the relative worth or utility of advertising to consumers,” according to author Robert H. Ducoffe. Four factors influence a consumer's perception of the value of advertising: "informativeness, deceptiveness, irritation, and entertainment.” Besides the information gained from an advertisement, entertainment value was also an important factor in consumers' perception of an ad's value.

A later study, Advertising Value and Advertising on the Web, from the same author, looked at how the public perceived advertising on the early Internet. Respondents did not think the Internet would successfully connect advertisers with consumers. However, the study did confirm the importance of information value, entertainment, and irritation as factors in advertising effectiveness.

These early findings regarding effective advertising also apply to advertising on social media. Like Internet advertising, effective social media advertising comes down to information, entertainment, and irritation values when judged by users. However, a study of effective advertising on social media found that "less is more" in terms of advertising content, i.e., brands should have content that delivers the most value in the least amount to avoid irritating users. 

Recent research has come to some broad-based conclusions about effective social media advertising. Advertisements on social media were effective when they were informed, entertained, and found to be credible by audiences, leading to an increase in purchase intention (Dao, Le, Cheng & Chen, 2014). Conversely, advertising found to be irritating, advertisements would see a decrease in value. To be effective, ads on social media should "focus on providing information content in their advertisements to make their advertisements worth it for consumers," according to the effective advertising study mentioned above. 

Successful social media advertising relies on the Journal of Marketing Communications "4C's" of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) credibility: community, competence, content, and consensus. As was the case with traditional notions of effectiveness, social media advertising is successful when it informs, entertains, and avoids irritating users.

For social media advertising's positive points, users’ concerns regarding privacy have created a paradox where advertising is concerned. On the one hand, users are willing to trade personal information; in return, advertisers get increased purchase intention, word-of-mouth mentions, and spread of the brand throughout the network. On the other hand, users are suspicious of their data being used by advertisers, which can affect their behavior toward ads on social media. Giving users the perception that they had more control over how marketeers used their data increased advertisements’ effectiveness. User judgments and how user data is used contribute to users’ perceptions of advertising on social media.

There has been considerable work done regarding the potential symptoms and causes for SMF. Concerns about privacy have featured prominently SMF-related research, with researchers finding that more significant concern regarding privacy on social media leads to an increase in SMF. When signing up for services, users agree to terms of service requiring the sharing of personal information, leading to users feeling as though their privacy has been invaded.

Users that experience SMF also report that "stressors," such as information overload, feature overload, and the pressure to interact on social media, all contributed to SMF. Social overload (a feeling of being pressured to socialize with others) was reported in the Information and Management journal as the most significant factor in SMF and, therefore, limiting or ending social media use.

Finally, users that had greater confidence in using social media, had positive perceptions of social media, and extroverts have been found less likely to experience SMF. Conversely, individuals with higher confidence using social media and were more neurotic experienced SMF more profoundly.

Scholars have alerted the industry to the potential problems that SMF poses and put forward suggestions for how to combat SMF's effects. Research has recommended dialing back on content and increased transparency to comfort users and their SMF-related concerns. SMF affects the recall of advertising content; advertisers need to be aware of consumers’ state of mind when processing social media content.

SMF poses a distinct threat to the model upon which social media companies rely, i.e., gaining and keeping users' attention. Without eyeballs seeing ads, the advertisers who use social media have less of an incentive to pay social media operators for the tools that allow them to target users. The challenge that SMF poses to advertisers is unique: advertisers need eyes on social media, but the tools that could unlock clues to users' preferences could trigger privacy concerns. Despite the suggestions of researchers, it is advertisers and social media operators who will have to figure out how best to combat SMF and its threat to the business model social media is built upon. 

About the Author

Collin Yoxall is a communication researcher and recent graduate of the Strategic Communication Master's program at Texas Christian University. This article is a summarized version of in-depth academic research pending publication. Collin is available on LinkedIn for anyone interested in contacting him about his study.