Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-024-01243-8

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Using data mining to discover new patterns of social media

and smartphone use and emotional states
Yeslam Al‑Saggaf1 · Md Anisur Rahman2 · Uffe Kock Wiil3

Received: 14 November 2023 / Revised: 8 March 2024 / Accepted: 8 March 2024

© The Author(s) 2024

Abstract
Social media and smartphone use are strongly linked to users' emotional states. While numerous studies have established
that fear of missing out (FOMO), boredom, and loneliness predict social media and smartphone use, numerous other studies
have concluded that social media and smartphone use negatively impact these emotional states (i.e., FOMO, boredom, and
loneliness). Phubbing (phone snubbing), which is the act of ignoring a physically present person in favour of a smartphone,
is associated with both social media and smartphone use and users’ emotional states. Much of the above research, however,
has adopted the traditional hypothesis testing method. So far, limited work has been done using data-driven approaches. This
paper uses data mining techniques to uncover previously unknown patterns about social media and smartphone use, phubbing,
and users' emotional states based on two existing datasets originating from online questionnaires facilitated through social
media. Novel patterns related to FOMO, loneliness, boredom, and phubbing are discovered and explored in detail. The study
also demonstrates the usefulness of the data-driven approach and establishes it as a valid alternative to the hypothesis-driven
approach to investigating social media and smartphone use, phubbing, and users' emotional states.

Keywords Phubbing · Data mining · Boredom · Loneliness · Fear of missing out (FOMO)

1 Introduction on social media are related (Al-Saggaf 2021). Phubbing

Several studies have revealed that fear of missing out
(FOMO), boredom, and loneliness predict phubbing, which
is the act of looking at the smartphone while one is talk-
ing to another in person (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019; Franchina
et al. 2018; Yaseen et al. 2021b). This means experiencing
these emotional states can trigger smartphone users to phub
others during face-to-face conversations. At the same time,
a few other studies have shown that phubbing increased
levels of loneliness, and boredom (Zhao et al. 2021; Wang
et al. 2021). This shows that the relationship between phub-
bing and emotional states is complex. Moreover, a recent
study has revealed that FOMO, phubbing, and time spent
* Uffe Kock Wiil
ukwiil@mmmi.sdu.dk
1
School of Computing, Mathematics and Engineering,
Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia
2
La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University, Melbourne,
Australia
3
The Maersk Mc‑Kinney Moller Institute, University
of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
fully mediated the effect of FOMO on time spent on social
media meaning that users coped with FOMO by ignoring
others in social situations in favour of the smartphone and
this resulted in users spending more time on social media
(Al-Saggaf 2021). It is clear from this research that phub-
bing links social media and smartphone use with emotional
states. In addition, phubbing is associated with a plethora
of other effects (Al-Saggaf and O’Donnell 2019a). Partner
phubbing ignited the phubbed partner’s feeling of anxiety
leading them to engage in spying on their phubbing partner's
digital activities (Schokkenbroek et al. 2022). In another
recent study, being phubbed by a partner was found to be
associated with lower relationship satisfaction, anger, frus-
tration, and retaliation (by the phubbed partner) (Thomas
et al. 2022). In the case of parents phubbing, a study from
China revealed that parents phubbing lowered children's
self-esteem to which children responded by showing signs
of suicidal ideation (Wang and Qiao 2022). These harmful
effects show that phubbing is not a harmless act, rather a
harmful behaviour (Hunter-Brown 2021). While efforts to
investigate the relationships among social media and smart-
phones use, phubbing, and emotional states using validated

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 90 Page 2 of 10
scales and employing the scientific method of hypothesis
testing, should continue, as these investigations offer robust
findings, another way to learn more about the relationships
among social media and smartphone use, phubbing, and
emotional states is to use data mining (Al-Saggaf 1152).
Unlike traditional investigations (validated measurements),
data mining facilitates the analysis of numerous factors at
the same time, while overcoming issues of multicollinearity
and non-normality violations.
In addition, because data mining can select attributes on
which to split data (Al-Saggaf and Walsh Oct. 2021), it can
accurately estimate factor importance while avoiding Type
I errors (i.e., rejecting a true null hypothesis) (Mullainathan
and Spiess 2017; Obermeyer and Emanuel 2016; Spielberger
1989). This paper uses data mining techniques to find out
more about the relationships among social media and smart-
phone use, phubbing, and emotional states. For example, a
decision tree algorithm such as J48 produces a set of logic
rules (i.e., root to leaf path) that are used to understand the
reason why a particular incident has happened (Quinlan
1996, 1993; Rahman et al. 2020a, 2020b, 2022). This study
uses data mining techniques to discover new patterns related
to social media and smartphone use, phubbing, loneliness,
state boredom, state FOMO and trait boredom using two
datasets whereas a previous study (Rahman et al. 2022)
discovered patterns related to phubbing using one dataset.
Also, the emotional states covered in the study (Rahman
et al. 2022) are different from the emotional states covered
in this study. The contributions of the paper are:
• Advancing the field of social media and smartphone use
and psychology by using data mining techniques to reveal
previously unknown patterns about the phubbing phe-
nomenon based on two existing datasets.
• Novel patterns related to phubbing, loneliness, state bore-
dom, state FOMO, and trait boredom are discovered and
explored in detail.
• Providing a different perspective to social media and
smartphone use and emotional states derived through
an alternative data-driven research approach, thereby
facilitating the comparison between this approach and
the traditional investigations that use validated measure-
ments and the scientific method of hypothesis testing.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 dis-
cusses related work, Sect. 3 presents a discussion on datasets
and the model-building process, Sect. 4 presents the results
and patterns of the models, Sect. 5 discusses the models, and
Sect. 6 presents conclusions and future plans.
Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90
2 Related work
Social media and smartphone use and emotional states are
interlinked. Phubbing occurs when someone momentar-
ily shifts their attention from a face-to-face conversation
with another person to the smartphone (Al-Saggaf 2022).
Numerous factors that can trigger phubbing have been sug-
gested in the literature, including FOMO (Franchina et al.
2319), boredom (Yam and Kumcagiz 2020), both state
and trait (Al-Saggaf 1152), and loneliness (Yaseen et al.
2021a). FOMO is the feeling of anxiety or restlessness that
arises from the belief that others might be experiencing
more enjoyable activities or events than oneself (Franchina
et al. 2319). State FOMO (Balta et al. 2020) is a temporary
form of FOMO that is triggered by a particular situation or
event, such as scrolling through social media and seeing
friends' posts about a fun activity that you were not invited
to Przybylski et al. (2013).
State boredom refers to a temporary and situational
experience of boredom, such as waiting in a long line or
attending a tedious meeting, while trait boredom reflects
a more stable and enduring tendency to experience bore-
dom across a variety of situations and contexts, which
may be related to personality traits or other individual
factors. Boredom is the state often arising from a lack of
stimulation or interest in one's surroundings or activities
(Vodanovich et al. 2005). Scholars differentiate several
types of boredom, but the main two are state and trait
boredom (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019). Trait boredom is the
recurring tendency or chronic disposition of individuals
to experience boredom (Sharp and Hemmings 2013). This
is different from state boredom, which is the fleeting feel-
ing of boredom in a given moment (Damon and Louis
2010). Loneliness is experienced when social connections
are considered to be lacking (Maclean et al. 2022). Like
FOMO and boredom, loneliness can also be experienced
temporarily (state) or chronically (trait) (Al-Saggaf and
O’Donnell 2019b).
An existing study (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019) showed that
boredom has a relationship with phubbing. The authors
in study (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019) used a regression model
to show that trait boredom predicts the phubbing fre-
quency. Another study (Al-Saggaf and O’Donnell 2019b)
also used a regression model to show state FOMO has a
strong correlation with state phubbing and state boredom.
The datasets used in our paper are also used in previous
studies (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019; Al-Saggaf and O’Donnell
2019b). However, the studies (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019; Al-
Saggaf and O’Donnell 2019b) did not apply data mining
techniques to discover patterns related to phubbing. An
existing data mining-based study (Rahman et al. 2022) is
used to discover patterns related to phubbing. However,
Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90 Page 3 of 10 90

the study (Rahman et al. 2022) discovers patterns only Table 1  Accuracy of the techniques
related to phubbing whereas the present study discovers Model J48 NB RT RF
patterns related to phubbing, loneliness, state boredom,
state FOMO, and trait boredom. Moreover, the predictors Loneliness 60.62 58.46 54.15 55.38
(i.e., attributes) used in Rahman et al. (2022) are also dif- State Boredom 44.61 39.38 46.76 44.61
ferent than the predictors used in the present study. State FOMO 68.00 46.46 62.15 68.61
Phubbing-Study 2 69.53 49.23 60.92 68.92
Trait Boredom 73.30 75.28 65.91 68.18
3 Materials and methods Phubbing-Study 1 65.06 63.06 55.11 54.55

The best performance are highlighted in bold

3.1 Datasets

Data used in the generation of data mining-based models
were sourced from two datasets collected as part of two dif-
ferent but related studies on phubbing behaviour (Al-Saggaf
et al. 2019; Al-Saggaf and O’Donnell 2019b). Both studies
received approval from the first two authors’ University’s
Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC)—equivalent
to Institutional Review Board approval—Protocol Number
H200201770.
The first study (Study 1) aimed at understanding phub-
bing behaviour more broadly, addressing questions, such as
how often people phub, who do people phub more often, in
which situations people phub others more frequently, and
which apps do people use the phubbing of others, as well
as phubbing association with trait boredom, which is the
chronic form of boredom. Data for Study 1 was collected
in 2018 using an online survey. Participation in the survey
was solicited through social media platforms, such as Twit-
ter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and through traditional media
channels, such as newspaper articles, and radio and televi-
sion appearances. A total of 385 participants completed the
SurveyMonkey questionnaire. Respondents were mostly
Australian residents (96.64%) and predominantly females
(71.07%). They aged between 18 and 71 years and while
47.47% of the respondents lived in metropolitan areas,
52.53% lived in regional areas. See (Al-Saggaf et al. 2019)
for more information on Study 1.
The second study (Study 2) aimed at understanding
phubbing as a fleeting reaction and investigated its associa-
tion with other fleeting behaviours, such as state loneliness
(the trainset form of loneliness), state boredom, and state
FOMO. This second study focussed mainly on the predic-
tors of phubbing as a momentary behaviour. Data for Study
2 was collected in 2019 also using an online survey and in
addition to recruiting participants through social media plat-
forms, participation in the survey also occurred through sev-
eral websites and discussion mediums, such as Reddit.com.
A total of 325 participants completed the Google Forms
questionnaire. Respondents came from several Western
countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom,
and Australia but a good number of respondents also came
from Asian countries. Interestingly, respondents were again
predominantly females (73.87%). They aged between 18 and
65 years and while 50.2% of the respondents lived in metro-
politan areas, 49.8% lived in regional areas. See (Al-Saggaf
and O’Donnell 2019b) for more information on Study 2.
3.2 Methods
Our method is a data mining-based method which has four
basic steps that we explain below:
• Step 1: Data collection
• Step 2: Data pre-processing
• Step 3: Model development
• Step 4: Insights of the model
Step 1 of our method is data collection. We used two
datasets which were used in two previous studies on phub-
bing. A dataset has a number of rows (i.e., records) and a
number of columns (i.e., attributes). The attribute of a data-
set can be either numerical and/or categorical.
In Step 2, we eliminate records with missing values, if
there are any. For model-building purposes, the attributes
of a dataset are grouped into two categories namely class
attribute and non-class attribute. If a dataset has more than
one class attribute, then we prepare a sub dataset for each
class attribute separately. In each sub-dataset, there is only
one class attribute and all non-class attributes of the original
dataset. The number of records and the number of non-class
attributes in each sub-dataset is the same except for the class
attribute.
In Step 3, for each sub dataset, we build models using
data mining techniques namely J48 Decision Tree (Quin-
lan 1996, 1993), Random Tree (RT) (Rahman 2014), Ran-
dom Forest (RF) (Frank et al. 2005), and Naive Bayes
(NB) (Breiman 2000). J48, NB, RT and RF algorithms are
available in Weka (Rahman 2014). The main reason for
using four interpretable algorithms is to compare their per-
formance to select the best-performing algorithm and to
enable the results to be human interpretable. The J48 algo-
rithm demonstrated the best performance (see Tables 1,
2, 3, 4) and was selected for the subsequent data mining
 90 Page 4 of 10 Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90

Table 2  Recall of the techniques

Model J48 NB RT RF

Loneliness 0.61 0.59 0.54 0.55

State Boredom 0.45 0.39 0.47 0.45
State FOMO 0.68 0.47 0.62 0.69
Phubbing-Study 2 0.70 0.49 0.61 0.69
Trait Boredom 0.73 0.75 0.66 0.68
Phubbing-Study 1 0.65 0.63 0.55 0.55

The best performance are highlighted in bold

Table 3  Precision of the techniques

Model J48 NB RT RF

Loneliness 0.59 0.56 0.54 0.54

State Boredom 0.41 0.40 0.46 0.41
State FOMO 0.64 0.68 0.63 0.66
Phubbing-Study 2 0.66 0.65 0.61 0.67
Trait Boredom 0.66 0.57 0.67 0.66
Phubbing-Study 1 0.63 0.60 0.57 0.54

The best performance are highlighted in bold

Fig. 1  A branch of the decision tree considering State FOMO as the
class attribute
Table 4  F1-score of the techniques
Model J48 NB RT RF
nodes are shown by rectangles, the branches are shown by
Loneliness 0.55 0.56 0.54 0.55 lines, and the dotted line indicates the remaining part of
State Boredom 0.41 0.34 0.46 0.42 the tree. The root to a leaf path of a decision tree is called
State FOMO 0.65 0.46 0.63 0.67 a logic rule (i.e., pattern). A leaf of a decision tree can be
Phubbing-Study 2 0.66 0.49 0.61 0.67 homogeneous and/or heterogeneous. If the class values of
Trait Boredom 0.68 0.65 0.66 0.67 the records in a leaf are the same, then the leaf is called a
Phubbing-Study 1 0.63 0.58 0.56 0.54 homogeneous leaf, otherwise, it is a heterogeneous leaf.
The best performance are highlighted in bold
In Step 4, we obtain the insights of each model. For the
J48 decision tree (as an example), we obtain insights by
examining the patterns of each decision tree. The patterns
tasks. The J48 decision tree algorithm is generally used from each decision tree model are written in a.csv file by
for pattern analysis (Rahman et al. 2020a, 2020b, 2022). using a Java program that takes the output of the decision
A decision tree contains nodes, leaves and branches as tree as input. The number of patterns in a decision tree is
shown in Fig. 1. The J48 decision tree algorithm divides a the same as the number of leaves in that decision tree. The
dataset into mutually exclusive horizontal segments based support (i.e., number /of records) in a leaf, the number of
on the values of the attribute tested on a node. For the records in a leaf with the majority class value, the number
J48 decision tree, we used tenfold cross-validation, the of miss-classified records, and the confidence of the major-
minimum number of records per leaf is two and the value ity class value in the leaf are also stored in the.csv file. The
of the confidence factor is 0.99. We aimed to perform lim- confidence for each pattern is calculated using the following
ited pruning of the decision tree. Hence, we used a higher formula:
confidence factor value (i.e., 0.99) instead of the default
TR − MR
confidence factor value (i.e., 0.25). We observed that for a Confidence = (1)
TR
confidence factor of 0.25, we get a small decision tree that
does not provide useful patterns. For the other algorithms, where TR denotes the number of records in a leaf and MR
we used their default parameters. A branch of the decision denotes the number of misclassified records in the leaf. For
tree is presented in Fig. 1 considering state FOMO as the all the algorithms, we obtain the classification accuracy,
class attribute where the leaves are shown by ovals, the recall, precision, and F1-score values to provide a broad set
Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90
of metrics to best handle possible dataset challenges such
as class imbalance.
4 Results
As mentioned in Sect. 3.1, we used two datasets from two
previous studies on phubbing. After removing the records
with missing values (Step 2) there were 352 records in the
Study 1 dataset and 325 records in the Study 2 dataset. In
the Study 1 dataset, there were three independent variables
and two dependent variables. Age, gender, and geographical
area were independent variables whereas trait boredom and
phubbing were dependent variables. The domain values of
trait boredom were {bored, not-bored} and for phubbing,
they were {phubber, not-phubber}.
There were six independent variables and four dependent
variables in the Study 2 dataset. Age, gender, geographical
area, the number of people the participants follow on social
media (i.e., followees), the number of people who follow
the participants on social media (i.e., followers), and daily
time spent on social media (in minutes) were independent
variables, whereas lonely, state FOMO, state boredom, and
phubbing were dependent variables. For each dependent
variable, a separate analysis was performed. The domain val-
ues of lonely were {lonely and not-lonely}, the domain val-
ues of state FOMO were {slight to extreme and never}, the
domain values of state boredom were {agree, disagree, and
neutral}, and the domain values of phubbing were {phubber
and not-phubber}.
4.1 Models
We compared the performance of the techniques in terms
of accuracy, recall, precision, and F1 score (Rahman 2014;
Frank et al. 2005). The performance of the models is pre-
sented in Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The accuracy
is defined as the total number of correctly classified records
divided by the total number of records in a dataset (Quinlan
1996, 1993; Frank et al. 2005). If TP is the number of true
positive records, FP is the number of false positive records,
FN is the number of false negative records and FP is the
number of false positive records then accuracy is calculated
using the following formula:
TP + TN
Accuracy = (2)
TP + TN + FP + FN
The F1 score is calculated based on precision and recall.
The precision is defined as the number of positive class pre-
dictions that belong to the positive class, whereas the recall
is defined as the number of positive class predictions of all
positive records in the dataset (Frank et al. 2005). The for-
mulas for precision, recall, and F1-score are given below:
Page 5 of 10 90
TP
Precision = (3)
TP + FP
TP
Recall = (4)
TP + FN
2∗Precision∗Recall
F1−score = (5)
Precision + Recall
We have compared the performance of J48 with three
baseline classification techniques namely Random Tree (RT)
(Rahman 2014), Random Forest (RF) (Frank et al. xxxx),
and Naive Bayes (NB) (Breiman 2000). From Tables 1, 2, 3,
and 4, we can see that in terms of accuracy, recall, precision,
and F1-score the overall performance of J48 is better than
RT, RF and NB. Therefore, we use J48 for model-building
purposes. Moreover, from J48 we can easily extract the
logic rules (i.e., patterns) that are used to understand why
a particular incident has occurred. The two models using
J48 for the Study 1 dataset are labelled Trait Boredom and
Phubbing-Study 1 whereas Loneliness, State Boredom, State
FOMO, and Phubbing-Study 2 are the four models from the
Study 2 dataset. Some interesting patterns that emerged from
these models are presented in the following sections.
4.1.1 Loneliness model
We present some interesting patterns of the loneliness model
in Table 5. It appears from Table 4 that age, gender, geo-
graphical area and, to some extent, the number of people
the participants follow on social media and daily time spent
on social media are important factors in the experience of
loneliness among the research participants. Specifically,
those under the age of 44 years and who live in a regional
area are likely to report feeling lonely. Males living in a
metropolitan area whose number of followees is less than
or equal to 382 are also likely to report feeling lonely. In the
case of females, those who are less than or equal to 24 years
of age are likely to report feeling lonely, if they were living
in a metropolitan area and their number of followees were
less than or equal to 382.
However, if females with these characteristics were above
the age of 24, then they were less likely to report feeling
lonely. On the other hand, participants whose age was above
44 years and who spent less than or equal to 70 min a day on
social media are less likely to report feeling lonely.
4.1.2 State Boredom model
In Table 6, we present some interesting patterns of the state
boredom model. In a similar vein to patterns from the pre-
vious model, age, gender geographical area and, to some
extent, the number of followers on social media and daily
 90 Page 6 of 10 Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90

Table 5  Patterns related to loneliness

Pattern Support Confidence (%)

If the age is less than or equal to 44 years and the geographical area is regional, then the participant can be classified 147 67.35
as lonely (147.0/48.0)
If the age is less than or equal to 24 years, the geographical area is metropolitan, the number of followees is less than 55 72.73
or equal to 382 people, and the gender is female then the participant can be classified as lonely (55/15)
If the age is less than or equal to 44 years but greater than 24, the geographical area is metropolitan, the number of 22 59.10
followees is less than or equal to 382, and the gender is female then the participant can be classified as not lonely
(22/9)
If the age is less than or equal to 44 years, the geographical area is metropolitan, the number of followees is less than 43 65.12
or equal to 382, and the gender is male then the participant can be classified as lonely (43/15)
If the age is greater than 44 years and daily time spent on social media is less than or equal to 70 min, then the par- 20 90.00
ticipant can be classified as not lonely (20/2)

Table 6  Patterns related to state boredom

Pattern Support Confidence (%)

If the age is less than or equal to 47, the daily time spend on social media is less than or equal to 89 min, the geo- 81 48.15
graphical area is regional, the gender is female, and the number of followers on social media is greater than 22 then
the participant can be classified as momentarily bored (81/42)
If the age is less than or equal to 47, daily time spent on social media is less than or equal to 89 min, the geographi- 80 51.25
cal area is metropolitan, and the gender is female then the participant can be classified as momentarily bored
(80/39)
If age is less than or equal to 47, geographical area is metropolitan, gender is male, daily time spent on social media 21 47.62
is less than or equal to 5 min, and the number of followers on social media is less than or equal to 164 then the
participant can be classified as momentarily bored (21/11)
If the age is greater than 47 then the participant can be classified as momentarily bored (18/1) 18 94.44
If the age is less than or equal to 47 but more than 17 years, daily time spent on social media is less than or equal to 18 83.33
89 min but more than 5 min, the area is metropolitan, the gender is male, and the number of followees on social
media is more than 25 then the participant can be classified as momentarily bored (18/3)

Table 7  Patterns related to state FOMO

Pattern Support Confidence (%)

If daily time spent on social media is more than 20 min, then participants can be classified as experiencing “slight to 156 86.54
extreme” FOMO (156/21)
Daily time spent on social media is less than 20, and if age is less than or equal to 30 then participants can be classi- 120 64.17
fied as experiencing “slight to extreme” FOMO (120/43)
Age is more than 30, and daily time spent on social media is less than or equal to 2 min then participants can be clas- 18 83.33
sified as not experiencing any FOMO (18/3)

time spent on social media seem to influence the research
participants' temporary experience of feeling bored.
With strong confidence but weak support, participants
above 47 years of age are likely to momentarily feel bored.
Females under the age of 47 who live in a regional area
and spend less than an hour and a half on social media and
whose number of followers is greater than 22 are likely
to feel momentarily bored. The same can be said about
females under the age of 47 who live in a metropolitan
area and spend less than an hour and a half on social
media. The only difference in their case is that their num-
ber of followers was not included in the rule. In the case
of males, if they are under the age of 47, live in a metro-
politan area and their number of followers is under 164 but
spend five minutes or less a day on social media then are
likely to feel momentarily bored. Likewise, if these men
living in a metropolitan area, were under the age of 47 but
older than 17 years, and whose daily use of social media
is under an hour and 30 min but more than five minutes,
then they are likely to report feeling momentarily bored.
Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90 Page 7 of 10 90

Table 8  Patterns related to phubbing (Study 2 dataset)

Pattern Support Confidence (%)

If daily time spent on social media is more than 3 min, then the participant can be classified as a phubber (250/60) 250 76
If the gender is female, the geographical area is metropolitan, the daily time spent on social media is less than 5 80
1 min, the number of followers on social media is less than or equal to 10, and the age is greater than 27 then the
participant can be classified as a phubber (5)
If daily time spent on social media is less than or equal to 3 min, the gender is male, the geographical area is met- 18 77.78
ropolitan, and the number of followees on social media is less than or equal to 10 then the participant cannot be
classified as a phubber (18/4)

Table 9  Patterns related to trait boredom

Pattern Support Confidence (%)

If the age is less than or equal to 31, the frequency of looking at smartphone is between 2 and 3 times, the gender is 8 62.5
male and the geographic area is regional then the participant can be classified as bored (8/3)
If the age is less than or equal to 22, and the frequency of looking at smartphone is less than or equal to 2 then the 6 83.33
participant can be classified as bored (6/1)
If the age is less than or equal to 55, and the frequency of looking at smartphone is more than 4 then the participant 6 66.67
can be classified as bored (6/2)
If the age is less than or equal to 55, the frequency of looking at smartphone is between 2 and 3, and the gender is 110 67.27
female then the participant can be classified as not bored (110/36)
If the age is between 22 and 55, the frequency of looking at smartphone is less than or equal to 2, and the gender is 66 90.91
female then the participant can be classified as not bored (66/6)

4.1.3 State FOMO model 4.1.5 Trait Boredom model

In Table 7, we present some interesting patterns of the state
FOMO model. With regards to FOMO, daily time spent on
social media and age were the crucial factors. Participants
who spend more than 20 min a day on social media are likely
to experience some degree of FOMO. Participants under the
age of 30 who spend less than 20 min a day on social media
are likely to experience some form of FOMO. However, par-
ticipants above the age of 30 who spend less than 2 min a
day on social media are not likely to experience any FOMO.
4.1.4 Phubbing (Study 2 dataset) model
We present some interesting patterns of the Phubbing (Study
2 dataset) model in Table 8. Several individual characteris-
tics provide clues on who is likely to phub others including
daily spend on social media, gender, geographical area and
number of followers. Participants who spend more than three
minutes on social media are likely to engage in phubbing
behaviour. If the participant is female above the age of 27
and living in a metropolitan area, then they are likely to phub
others if their number of followees is less than 10 even if the
time spent on special media is just one minute. The same
can’t be said about males who share these characteristics
with females even if the time spent on special media is under
three minutes.
We present some interesting patterns of the trait boredom
model in Table 9. Contrary to patterns from the previous
models, male participants under the age of 31 living in a
regional area are likely to be bored if they occasionally or
sometimes phub others. Participants under the age of 22 are
likely to be bored if they rarely or occasionally phub oth-
ers. Interestingly, participants under the age of 55 are likely
to be bored if they most frequently phub others. However,
female participants under the age of 55 are not likely to be
bored if they only occasionally or sometimes phub others.
Likewise, female participants between the ages of 22 and 55
are not likely to be bored if they only rarely or occasionally
phub others.
4.1.6 Phubbing (Study 1 dataset) model
We present some interesting patterns of the Phubbing (Study
1 dataset) model in Table 10. Phubbing and boredom are
interrelated. Participants who are not feeling bored and
whose age is under 44 years, then they are likely to engage
in phubbing behaviour. Similarly, if participants are not feel-
ing bored and whose age is above 44 years but who live in a
metropolitan area then they are likely to engage in phubbing
behaviour. However, if participants are males who live in a
metropolitan area, then they are likely to engage in phub-
bing behaviour if they feel bored if age is not included in the
 90 Page 8 of 10
Table 10  Patterns related to phubbing (Study 1 dataset)
Pattern
If a participant is not bored and their age is less than or equal to 44 then the participant can be classified as a phubber 144
(144/46)
If a participant is not bored, the age is more than 44, and the geographical area is metropolitan then the participant
can be classified as a phubber (65/31)
If a participant is bored and gender is female, then the participant can be classified as a phubber (58/7)
If a participant is bored, the gender is male, and the geographical area is metropolitan then the participant can be
classified as a phubber (13/3)
equation. In the case of females, if they are feeling bored,
they are likely to engage in phubbing behaviour.
5 Discussion
This section discusses the key results from this research to
relate these results to previous research findings that primar-
ily employed the scientific method of hypothesis testing.
Loneliness and FOMO appeared to be strongly influenced
by age and time spent on social media. Participants under
44 who lived in a regional area are likely to feel lonely. This
is consistent with the literature. In Australia, for example,
where one in three feel lonely,1 young people and middle-
aged people are lonelier than other age groups and those in
regional areas are more likely than those in metropolitan
areas to feel socially isolated. On the other hand, those over
44 are not likely to feel lonely if they spend less than or
equal to 70 min per day on social media. Indeed, Austral-
ians who reported feeling lonely, are more likely to have a
social media addiction. A recent study (Al-Saggaf 2021)
found that respondents in regional areas spent less time on
social media compared to their metropolitan counterparts. It
may be that the reason that participants under 44 feel lonely
is not because they spend less time on social media, but
because they live in a regional area as the first rule sug-
gested. Likewise, the reason participants in metropolitan
areas, especially those over 44, are not likely to feel lonely
is not because they spend more time on social media, but
because they spend less time on social media. Both males
and females under the age of 24, are likely to feel lonely
if they live in a metropolitan area and followed less than
or equal to 382 social media contacts. This finding is not
surprising. A study (Al-Saggaf et al. 2016), which adopted
the scientific method, has revealed that social media users
who expressed feelings of loneliness had smaller network
sizes (M = 307).
1
https://​lonel​iness​aware​nessw​eek.​com.​au/​wp-​conte​nt/​uploa​ds/​2023/​
08/​state-​of-​nation-​social-​conne​ction-​2023.​pdf.
Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90
Support Confidence (%)
68.06
65 52.31
58 87.93
13 76.92
With FOMO, if social media users spend just over 20 min
a day on social media, they are likely to experience fear
of missing out. If they are under 30 and spend less than
20 min a day, they are likely to experience FOMO. A recent
study (Al-Saggaf 2021) has revealed that state FOMO pre-
dicted time spent on social media. An increase of one unit
of change in state FOMO resulted in an increase of six
minutes spent on social media. The current study, however,
suggests that the more time one spends on social media,
the more likely they are to experience fear of missing out.
The variation in the direction of the relationship between
time spent on social media and FOMO does not mean the
results of these studies are inconsistent. On the contrary, it
means these two influence each other. The more time spent
on social media, the more likely one is to experience FOMO
and the more one experiences FOMO, the more likely they
will spend more time on social media. This is especially true
if the individual is younger. On the other hand, those over
30, will not experience FOMO if they spend less than 2 min
a day, which suggests the less time spent on social media,
the less likely one is to experience FOMO.
State boredom and trait boredom were both influenced
by age, gender, and geographic location. In this study, par-
ticipants over 47 are likely to feel fleetingly bored. This is
not in line with a recent study on the relationship between
phubbing, fear of missing out and boredom (Al-Saggaf Jun.
2021), which found that as age increased, state boredom
decreased. This discrepancy is worth investigating in a
future study. Males under 31 who live in a regional area and
tend to phub others are likely to feel chronically bored. This
is consistent with the findings of two recent studies, (Al-
Saggaf et al. 2019; Boylan et al. 2021), that found that as
age increased, trait boredom decreased. However, the pattern
in this study applies only to those who tend to phub others
more, it does not apply to the association between boredom
proneness and age in general. Females under the age of 47
who live in a regional area, spend less than an hour and a half
on social media, and who have more than 22 followers on
social media are likely to feel temporarily bored. Their male
counterparts who live in a metropolitan area, spend under
five minutes on social media, and have less than 164 may
feel bored from time to time. In Al-Saggaf and O’Donnell’s
Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90
(Al-Saggaf and O’Donnell 2019b) study, the associations
between gender and state boredom and geographical loca-
tion and state boredom were not statistically significant. The
trend in this study must have been influenced more by time
spent on social media and social media network size. On the
other hand, Al-Saggaf (Al-Saggaf 2021) found that partici-
pants in regional areas spent less time on social media but
this research offered additional clues about the characteris-
tics of those participants that were females under the age of
47. Participants under the age of 55 who frequently phub
others are susceptible to long-term boredom.
Age, gender, and geographic location also affected the
predisposition to phubbing. Female participants above 27
who live in a metropolitan area, whose number of followees
is under 10, and who spend at least a minute daily on social
media are likely to phub others. Male participants, who live
in a metropolitan area but who report feeling bored are likely
to phub others. Likewise, participants over the age of 44 who
live in a metropolitan area and who are not bored are likely
to phub others. These observations are all novel and to the
best of our knowledge, they have not been reported previ-
ously in the literature.
6 Conclusion
This paper presented a data-driven approach to discover pre-
viously unknown patterns about the use of the smartphone
and social media, phubbing, state FOMO, loneliness, state
boredom and trait boredom using two datasets. We built sev-
eral models using two datasets to discover patterns relating
to these constructs. These patterns are novel as they have not
been reported in previous research. Studies that employed
the scientific method of hypothesis testing, tested a single
dependent variable. This limitation does not apply to the
data mining approach. Thus, more than one dependent vari-
able was tested in this research.
The patterns of the models showed that phubbing, state
FOMO, loneliness, state boredom and trait boredom are not
dependent on a single attribute. The patterns about loneli-
ness and FOMO showed that they are strongly influenced
by age and time spent on social media. The patterns about
FOMO showed that social media users who spent more than
20 min daily on social media are likely to experience FOMO.
Age, gender, and geographic location are common factors
affecting both state and trait boredom. The participants
under the age of 55 who frequently phub others are vulner-
able to long-term boredom. Age, gender, and geographic
location also affected the predisposition to phubbing.
Three limitations in our study should be outlined. First,
the number of participants in each dataset is relatively
small. Second, while each dataset encompassed a wide
range of demographics and geographies, the inclusion of an
Page 9 of 10 90
even wider range of demographics and geographies would
have no doubt significantly improved the generalizability
and relevance of the findings to a broader population with
diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. That said
the literature in this area (see (Al-Saggaf 2022) for more
information), has indicated that not all demographic vari-
ables (attributes from a data mining perspective) are deter-
minantal to how emotional states are experienced. While
age has consistently been found to be a significant factor
in the relationship between social media and smartphone
use and emotional states, gender and regionality, i.e., met-
ropolitan vs regional, have not been influential. Third, is
that both surveys, from which our datasets originated, used
cross-sectional data. It is true that adopting longitudinal
data to discover patterns around the use of social media
and smartphones and how they impact individuals’ emo-
tional states would have provided deeper insights into the
cause-and-effect relationship between technology use and
emotional states, but the aim of this research was not to
establish a cause-and-effect relationship. The aim was to dis-
cover patterns around the use of technology and emotional
states. Future research should adopt a longitudinal design to
investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between these
variables thereby facilitating the creation of a more com-
prehensive understanding of these complex relationships.
As part of future work, we plan to collect a new dataset
with more attributes and more participants. We also plan
to include a more balanced set of participants from dif-
ferent countries with culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds to explore what effects this might have on the
results.
Author contributions MAR designed the study, performed the data
analysis, and wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed and
revised the manuscript.
Funding Open access funding provided by University of Southern
Denmark.
Declarations
Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-
bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta-
tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,
provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes
were made. The images or other third party material in this article are
included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in
the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will
need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a
copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
 90 Page 10 of 10 Social Network Analysis and Mining (2024) 14:90

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