Loneliness and Social Media use Among Young Adults: the Mediating Role of Fear of Missing out and the Moderating Role of Digital Citizenship

Social media has become an integral part of social life during young adulthood, offering opportunities for connection while simultaneously exposing individuals to a continuous stream of information about the activities and experiences of others. The present study examined whether Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) explains the association between loneliness and social media use and whether digital citizenship moderates this relationship among young adults aged 18–25 years. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design (QUAN→QUAL) was employed. The quantitative phase included 500 young adults who completed measures of loneliness, FoMO, digital citizenship, and social media use. Pearson correlations, regression-based mediation, and moderation analyses were conducted, with bootstrapping used to estimate the indirect effect. The qualitative phase comprised two focus-group discussions involving 16 participants and was conducted after the quantitative analysis to contextualize the observed findings. Loneliness was positively associated with FoMO, r = .355, p < .001, and social media use, r = .323, p < .001. FoMO showed a stronger association with social media use, r = .505, p < .001. FoMO significantly mediated the association between loneliness and social media use, indirect effect = 0.015, 95% bootstrap CI [0.011, 0.019]. The overall loneliness × digital citizenship interaction was not significant, B = −0.006, SE = 0.005, p = .219. Additional moderation analyses of the five digital-citizenship dimensions—Internet Political Activism, Technical Skills, Local/Global Awareness, Critical Perspective, and Networking Agency—also yielded nonsignificant interaction effects (ps = .092–.682). The focus-group findings highlighted continuous social monitoring, online connection without emotional connection, social comparison and perceived exclusion, and digital awareness without emotional protection. Taken together, the findings indicate that FoMO represents a significant indirect statistical pathway linking loneliness with social media use, whereas neither overall digital citizenship nor its individual dimensions significantly altered the loneliness–social media use association in this sample. Because the study was cross-sectional, the findings should not be interpreted as evidence of causal or temporal relationships