Four Student Profiles Reveal How Video Addiction and FoMO Shape Distress

Short-form video platforms have become the default leisure environment for an entire generation of university students, and a new study from China suggests that the psychological toll of that habit depends far more on who you are than on how much you watch. In research published in Current Psychology, a team at Capital University of Physical Education and Sports in Beijing analyzed the combined patterns of short-form video addiction and fear of missing out, or FoMO, among 602 Chinese university students, and traced how those patterns connect to depression, anxiety, and stress through two self-regulation failures: the motivation to procrastinate at bedtime and the feeling of having drifted off course in life.

The study, led by Xi Chen and Ling Yan, drew on self-regulation theory and the I-PACE framework, a widely used model of addictive behaviors that describes problematic media use as the product of interactions among personal dispositions, affective states, and cognitive-executive processes. Rather than treating short-form video addiction and FoMO as separate variables, the researchers asked whether distinct configurations of the two exist in the student population and whether those configurations differ in their associations with negative affect. This person-centered approach, implemented through latent profile analysis, recognizes that two students with identical average scores can have very different psychological realities, one addicted to the videos themselves and the other driven by anxiety about what everyone else is watching.

Latent profile analysis is a statistical technique that sorts individuals into unobserved subgroups based on their response patterns across multiple measures. In this case, the researchers entered indicators of short-form video addiction and FoMO simultaneously and evaluated solutions with increasing numbers of profiles, using fit criteria and theoretical interpretability to settle on the best model. Four profiles emerged. The first was a high-risk engagement profile, combining elevated addiction and elevated FoMO. The second was a moderate-to-high-risk engagement profile, with moderately elevated levels of both. The third was labeled escapism-situational FoMO, a profile in which FoMO was elevated but short-form video addiction was not, suggesting students who use the platforms situationally, perhaps to escape negative moods or to keep up with social happenings, without the hallmark signs of addiction. The fourth was a low-risk engagement profile, with low levels of both, which served as the reference group for all subsequent comparisons.

The existence of the escapism-situational FoMO profile is one of the study’s most intriguing findings. It implies that FoMO and short-form video addiction are not simply two points on a single continuum of problematic use. A student can feel intense anxiety about missing out on social content, and even use videos to escape from distress, without developing the tolerance, withdrawal, and loss of control that define addiction. Conversely, the high-risk and moderate-to-high-risk profiles show that when addiction and FoMO rise together, the combination is associated with the poorest emotional outcomes. This heterogeneity matters for anyone trying to identify students at risk, because the two groups would look similar on a simple screen-time measure while differing sharply in their psychological makeup.

To connect the profiles to emotional distress, the researchers measured negative affect using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, a 21-item instrument that yields separate scores for depression, anxiety, and stress. They then tested a serial indirect-effects model, a statistical pathway analysis that examines whether the association between profile membership and negative affect travels through a chain of two mediators: bedtime procrastination motivation and derailment. Bedtime procrastination motivation refers to the reasons students give for delaying sleep in favor of other activities, such as entertainment or revenge against a day that felt unsatisfying. Derailment, a construct developed by Anthony Burrow and colleagues, captures the perception that one’s life has changed in self and direction, the unsettling sense of having drifted away from the person and path one expected to be.

The serial model produced a clear pattern. Compared with the low-risk engagement profile, the high-risk and moderate-to-high-risk profiles showed significant direct associations with higher negative affect, meaning that profile membership itself was linked to more depression, anxiety, and stress even before considering the mediators. These profiles also showed significant indirect associations through derailment alone and through the serial pathway in which bedtime procrastination motivation led to derailment, which in turn was associated with negative affect. In other words, students in these profiles were more motivated to procrastinate at bedtime, felt more derailed in life, and reported more emotional distress, with the serial chain accounting for part of the profile-distress connection.

The escapism-situational FoMO profile told a different story. It showed no significant direct or total association with negative affect, suggesting that students in this group were not more distressed than their low-risk peers overall. Yet the profile did show significant indirect associations through derailment and through the serial pathway involving bedtime procrastination motivation and derailment. This dissociation between total and indirect effects indicates that the emotional consequences of this profile operate entirely through the self-regulation chain: the students’ FoMO-driven bedtime procrastination motivation feeds a sense of derailment, which is associated with distress, but the profile itself carries no direct emotional penalty. The researchers also found that the independent indirect association through bedtime procrastination motivation alone was not significant, indicating that its statistical contribution became evident only when considered together with derailment in the serial pathway.

From a technical standpoint, this pattern of results highlights the value of serial mediation models in media psychology. The finding that bedtime procrastination motivation matters primarily in sequence with derailment suggests that the motivation to delay sleep is not, by itself, a strong signal of emotional problems. It becomes meaningful when it is followed by the perception of having drifted off course, as if the nightly habit of putting off bedtime gradually erodes the sense of direction in life. This aligns with the I-PACE model’s emphasis on the process character of addictive behaviors, in which repeated episodes of use and self-regulation failure accumulate into broader cognitive and affective consequences. It also aligns with derailment research showing that the construct predicts depression over time, particularly among students prone to brooding and self-reflection.

The study’s cross-sectional design imposes important limits on interpretation. Because all data were collected at a single point in time through self-report questionnaires, the researchers cannot establish whether short-form video addiction and FoMO cause negative affect, whether distressed students turn to videos and develop FoMO, or whether the relationships are reciprocal. The serial pathway is a statistical model of association, not a demonstration of temporal sequence. The sample, drawn from a single country and a single institution type, may not generalize to all university populations. The researchers also note that the datasets are not publicly available due to privacy and confidentiality concerns, though they can be requested from the corresponding author. Future longitudinal and experimental studies will be needed to test whether the self-regulation chain operates over time as the model implies.

Nevertheless, the findings carry practical weight for risk identification and preventive support among university students. The four-profile structure suggests that screening tools should assess short-form video addiction and FoMO jointly rather than in isolation, because the combination signals the highest emotional risk while the escapism-situational FoMO configuration signals a different, more indirect pathway. Interventions that target bedtime procrastination motivation and the sense of derailment, such as self-regulation training, sleep hygiene programs, and activities that restore a sense of direction in life, may be particularly effective for students whose FoMO drives nightly video use. The research was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China and adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki, with approval from the Ethics Committee of Capital University of Physical Education and Sports. As short-form video platforms continue to dominate student leisure time, understanding the distinct psychological profiles of their users may prove as important as measuring the hours they spend scrolling.

Subject of Research: Profiles of short-form video addiction and fear of missing out in relation to negative affect among university students: a latent profile analysis and serial indirect-effects analysis

Article Title: Profiles of short-form video addiction and fear of missing out in relation to negative affect among university students: a latent profile analysis and serial indirect-effects analysis

Article References: Chen, X., Cui, M., Sun, P., & Yan, L. (2026). Profiles of short-form video addiction and fear of missing out in relation to negative affect among university students: a latent profile analysis and serial indirect-effects analysis. Current Psychology, 45(17), Article 1449. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10015-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10015-w

Keywords: Profiles, short-form, video, addiction, fear, missing, relation, negative, affect, university, students, latent