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The Four Social Media Horsemen Of The Scarcity Apocalypse

This article is more than 4 years old.

Are you falling into the social media comparison trap?

“I consider Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram to be the four horsemen of the subjective scarcity apocalypse,” says marketing professor Kelly Goldsmith. “I mean, these platforms give us 24/7 access into all of the lives of all of those Joneses who we are so desperate to keep up with.”

Goldsmith began her research program as a doctoral student at Yale University. After serving as a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University for eight years, she recently joined the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University as an associate professor of marketing. She publishes regularly in top marketing and psychology journals.

In her research, Goldsmith examines people’s responses to uncertainty and scarcity, uncovering and explaining seemingly paradoxical effects. Marketing envy, when it comes to social media, is real and it is not a good thing.

Goldsmith says: “Even though we all have access to so much, many people, myself included, frequently talk about their lives as if they are experiencing scarcity.”

In one body of work, she shows that subjective scarcity is what happens when what we have is actually fine, but we still feel like we don’t have enough. What causes subjective scarcity? It’s things like social comparisons.

“Who we compare ourselves to has a huge influence on if we believe what we have is enough,” says Goldsmith. “We can also compare ourselves to the standards or expectations that others have for us, or even the goals that we have for ourselves, and any time we come up lacking we are going to experience a sense of subjective scarcity, even if – in actuality – what we have is totally fine.”

She believes subjective scarcity is worth understanding because today, for lots of us, subjective scarcity is increasing. Importantly, subjective scarcity is different than objective scarcity. Objective scarcity means is that you are actually running out of something that you need.

“If your car is low on gas, or your cell phone is low on battery, that is objective scarcity,” explains Goldsmith. “Similarly, if you don’t have enough time, or you don’t have enough money, or you don’t have enough room in your brain to think about all the time and money you don’t have enough of, those are forms of objective scarcity too.”

And despite the relative abundance in our society, she contends that in many ways objective scarcity is still alive and well.

“For example, we frequently feel like we don’t have enough time. This happens in part because technology has given us precedented access and opportunities and we do not want to miss out – personally or professionally.”

“It used to be that having a day job that paid the bills meant you were successful, right?” said Goldsmith. “Now people feel pressured to have a side hustle.”

(Guilty as charged, Professor Goldsmith.)

This is also known as FOMO: fear of missing out.

“As an academic, I felt compelled to understand how these everyday feelings of not having enough were affecting us as people,” says Goldsmith. “So I teamed up with Christopher Cannon and Caroline Roux to write a review paper. The review paper offers people a comprehensive summary of what behavioral research has taught us to date about how scarcity affects our thinking and our actions.”

Goldsmith admits that some of the data they have collected gives her reason to believe that these common, everyday experiences of not having enough can be put to good use.

“These frustrations don’t have to be limitations,” says Goldsmith. “They can increase generosity, and facilitate improvements in culture. They can lead to our making choices to take care of ourselves. And these are positive outcomes, both individually and collectively.”

My opinion is you should put limits on how much marketing time you invest in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Plan your social media work and work your social media plan. Make better choices about the time you spend and let go of the marketing FOMO.