The mediating role of loneliness in the association between fear of missing out and social media addiction among university students

This study examined the mediating roles of emotional and social loneliness, as two distinct dimensions of loneliness, in the associations between fear of missing out (FoMO) and the multidimensional model of social media addiction (SMA) among university students. SMA was assessed across four subdimensions: virtual tolerance, virtual communication, virtual problem, and virtual information. Data were collected from 331 university students and analyzed via structural equation modeling. FoMO was significantly associated with emotional loneliness and all four SMA subdimensions. Emotional loneliness mediated the associations between FoMO and virtual communication (B = 0.115, 95% CI [0.027, 0.216]) and virtual problem (B = 0.127, 95% CI [0.041, 0.219]), whereas social loneliness did not significantly mediate any of these pathways. These results emphasize the role of emotional disconnection in problematic social media use and support FoMO as a key psychological correlate of SMA. By distinguishing between two forms of loneliness and applying a multidimensional SMA framework, the study provides theoretical and practical insights with implications for targeted intervention strategies.