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Objective This study employed a three-wave longitudinal design to investigate whether fear of missing out (FoMO) mediates the relationship between loneliness and social networking site (SNS) addiction, and whether this indirect pathway is moderated by the imaginary audience (IA). Methods A total of 1, 337 Chinese college students (Mₐge = 19. 86 years, SD = 1. 79; 670 females) completed validated Chinese versions of measures assessing loneliness, FoMO, IA, and SNS addiction across three waves at six-month intervals. Regression-based mediation and moderation analyses were conducted using SPSS 26. 0. Bootstrapping with 5, 000 resamples was applied to test indirect effects, and simple slope analyses were performed for significant interactions. Results T1 loneliness was positively associated with T3 SNS addiction (β = 0. 19, p 0. 001). This association operated both directly (95% CI 0. 14, 0. 23) and indirectly via T2 FoMO (95% CI 0. 20, 0. 28), with the indirect effect accounting for 55. 81% of the total effect (95% CI 0. 39, 0. 47). T3 IA moderated the link between FoMO and SNS addiction (β = −0. 07, p 0. 001). Contrary to expectations, the positive association was stronger among low-IA individuals. Conclusion Interventions should target loneliness and FoMO while considering individual differences in IA.
Guo et al. (Tue,) studied this question.