Generation Z Denies Being FoMO, Yet Keeps Feeding the Algorithms That Create It

Fear of missing out has long been treated by psychologists and marketers alike as a personal vulnerability: a nagging anxiety that everyone else is living a more exciting life, and that a single missed notification might mean missing the moment altogether. A new study from Indonesia suggests that this framing is badly out of date. Research published in SN Social Sciences by Muhammad Rio Fariza and colleagues at Telkom University finds that young Indonesians actively reject the label of being “FoMO,” treating it as an insult that implies impulsive, irrational behavior, even as their everyday consumption practices continue to reproduce exactly the patterns the term describes. The result is what the authors call the FoMO paradox: a generation that symbolically disowns the phenomenon while remaining deeply embedded in the platform culture that produces it.

The study combined quantitative and qualitative methods in a sequential explanatory design. The team first surveyed 121 Generation Z respondents in Jakarta and Bandung, two of Indonesia’s largest and most digitally saturated metropolitan areas, and then conducted in-depth interviews with 18 informants drawn from that initial pool. This mixed-method structure allowed the researchers to measure broad attitudes toward FoMO-related consumption and then probe, in conversational detail, how those attitudes play out in daily routines of scrolling, watching live shopping streams, and following digital trends. The research was approved by Telkom University’s Research Ethics Committee and funded through the university’s Beginner Lecturer Research Scheme.

The quantitative phase revealed a striking pattern of symbolic rejection. When asked directly, respondents overwhelmingly declined to identify themselves as FoMO-driven consumers. In the vocabulary of social identity theory, which the authors use as a central interpretive framework, the FoMO label has become a stigmatized category. To be called FoMO is to be cast as someone who buys things without thinking, who chases trends blindly, who lacks the self-control that digital natives pride themselves on possessing. Members of Generation Z, the cohort born roughly between the mid-1990s and early 2010s, instead construct a self-image of savvy, deliberate, and critically aware digital consumption. They see themselves as people who use platforms strategically rather than being used by them.

Yet the interviews told a more complicated story. When the researchers moved from self-description to concrete accounts of everyday behavior, the same informants who rejected the FoMO label described consumption routines that look remarkably like it. They spoke of checking TikTok and other platforms constantly, of buying products they first encountered in live shopping streams, of feeling compelled to stay current with viral trends so they would have something to talk about with friends. The practices persisted even as the identity was disowned. FoMO, the study concludes, has not disappeared; it has gone underground, woven into the ordinary texture of platform engagement rather than experienced or admitted as a distinct fear.

This gap between what young consumers say and what they do is best understood, the authors argue, as a form of identity negotiation. Drawing on the social identity tradition, in which people manage their sense of self partly by aligning with positively valued groups and distancing themselves from negatively valued ones, the researchers show that rejecting the FoMO label is itself an identity work strategy. Generation Z members want to belong to the category of the digitally competent, the ones who are in on the joke rather than victims of it. Denying FoMO is a way of claiming status within platform culture, not a way of exiting it.

The study also situates this paradox within the technical architecture of contemporary platforms. Recommendation algorithms, particularly the collaborative filtering and content-based systems that power short-video feeds, are engineered to surface an endless stream of novel products, experiences, and social moments. Scholars of algorithmic consumer culture have described how these systems reshape not only what people see but how they curate their own visibility, with influencers and ordinary users alike learning to play what researchers call the visibility game. In such an environment, the fear of missing out is no longer primarily an internal psychological state; it is a structural feature of the feed, continuously regenerated by machine learning systems optimized for engagement.

Live shopping emerges in the study as a particularly potent site of this dynamic. Industry surveys cited by the authors indicate that a substantial majority of Indonesian Generation Z consumers have purchased products through live shopping formats, in which hosts present goods in real time while viewers interact, ask questions, and buy with a few taps. The format compresses the distance between seeing and buying to nearly zero, and its time-limited, event-like structure naturally amplifies urgency. A viewer who steps away risks missing a flash discount or a sold-out item, a mechanic that operationalizes FoMO at the level of platform design. The informants described these purchases as spontaneous yet rational, another instance of the paradox: consumption framed as considered even when triggered by engineered scarcity.

The Indonesian context adds weight to these findings. Indonesia has one of the world’s most active social media populations, with recent reporting and industry data suggesting extremely high daily screen time and a dominant role for Generation Z in online commerce. Surveys referenced in the study indicate that scrolling is the preferred leisure activity of Indonesian Gen Z and that a majority of the cohort shops through live commerce. At the same time, a large share of Indonesian Generation Z reports high digital literacy, which may explain the confidence with which they reject the FoMO label. They believe their literacy protects them, even as the study suggests that literacy and susceptibility are not the same thing.

The theoretical payoff of the research is a redefinition of FoMO itself. Earlier work, including foundational studies of FoMO’s prevalence among university students and its links to smartphone addiction and diminished well-being, treated it as an individual difference variable, something a person has more or less of. The new findings suggest that within digital platform culture, FoMO operates less as a private fear and more as a social practice, part of the ongoing work of maintaining relevance in networks where visibility is currency. Missing out is not merely unpleasant; it threatens one’s standing in the conversational economy of peers. Under this reading, the persistence of FoMO-driven consumption despite its symbolic rejection is not hypocrisy but adaptation: young consumers perform rationality while navigating systems that reward urgency.

For marketers, platform designers, and policymakers, the study carries practical implications. Marketing appeals that explicitly invoke fear of missing out, long a staple of promotional strategy, may now backfire with a cohort that has learned to resent the label, while the same urgency can still be produced indirectly through algorithmic feeds, live events, and social proof. For those concerned with digital well-being, the findings caution against interventions that target FoMO as an admitted problem, since the people most affected may be the least willing to name it. The paradox the Indonesian team documents, in which a generation denies the fear while living inside its machinery, suggests that understanding platform culture requires looking past what young consumers say about themselves and attending closely to the everyday routines, and the algorithms, that shape what they do.

Subject of Research: Digital consumer identity and FoMO-related consumption practices among Generation Z in platform culture

Article Title: The FoMO paradox: negotiating digital consumer identity among Generation Z in platform culture

Article References: Fariza, M. R., Alwaton, Y., Claudia, F., & Widyaningrum, S. Y. (2026). The FoMO paradox: negotiating digital consumer identity among Generation Z in platform culture. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01767-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01767-0

Keywords: FoMO, Generation Z, digital identity, platform culture, social media, live shopping, consumer behavior, algorithms, social commerce, Indonesia, identity negotiation, digital literacy