Scrolling into Doubt: The Interplay of Social Media Engagement, Digital Jealousy, and Commitment Uncertainty Among Emerging Adults

Abstract

Social media's role in romantic relationships is becoming more significant, impacting ways of communicating with others, and posing new problems, such as digital jealousy and insecurity about commitment. The study revealed that digital jealousy is a psychological phenomenon which is playing a significant part in the relationships between SMI, Digital Jealousy (DJ) and Commitment Uncertainty (CU) among university students in Lahore, Pakistan. A quantitative cross sectional correlational design was used and 190 university students aged 18-25 who were active social media users and actively involved in a romantic relationship were used. The Social Media Index, Digital Jealousy Scale and Commitment Uncertainty Short Scale were completed by participants. The Pearson product–moment correlation, hierarchical multiple regression, independent-samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Tukey's HSD post hoc test and chi-square analysis were completed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 26. The results showed that increased social media activity was significantly related to digital jealousy and self-directed commitment uncertainty. Digital jealousy was a strong predictor of self- and partner-directed commitment uncertainty. Moreover, when digital Jealousy was added to the model, the predictive effect of social media on self-directed commitment uncertainty was no longer significant, indicating that digital Jealousy can account for this relationship. There were no significant gender differences in digital jealousy, but the more often participants reported checking their partner's social media, the higher their digital jealousy scores were. The longer the relationship, the greater the association with partner-monitoring behaviour on social media was. The findings emphasize that digital jealousy is an important psychological mechanism that connects social media usage to uncertainty in relationships among emerging adults. The study helps to build the body of research on digital relationship dynamics and offers implications for relationship education and counselling practices to promote positive digital social media and romantic relationships.