Objective: This study aimed to examine the mediating role of online fear of missing out in the relationship between nomophobia and aviator gambling symptoms severity.

Methods: The study’s methodology was associative and cross-sectional in nature. Its population included all university students who resided in the Senga suburb of Gweru, Zimbabwe, during semester time (academic year 2025). 253 students were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling methods. Students completed the Nomophobia Questionnaire (Yildirim & Correia, 2015), Online Fear of Missing Out Inventory (Sette et al., 2020) and the adapted Online Gambling Symptom Assessment Scale (Kalkan & Griffiths, 2021). Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product moment correlation and structural equation modelling were used to analyse data at p < .05 level of significance in the JASP software (version 0.18.3).

Results: Nomophobia was positively correlated with online fear of missing out (p < .001). Online fear of missing out was positively correlated with aviator gambling symptom severity (p < .001). Nomophobia’s correlation with aviator gambling symptom severity was non-significant (p = .057). The direct effect of nomophobia on aviator gambling symptom severity was not statistically significant (95% CI [-0.071, 0.026]) while its total effect was marginally significant (95% CI [0.002, 0.097]). Nomophobia’s indirect effect on aviator gambling symptom severity through online fear of missing out was significant (95% CI [0.037, 0.115]).

Conclusion: This study demonstrates that nomophobia predicts aviator gambling through online fear of missing out. Interventions to reduce students’ vulnerability to aviator gambling should target the cognitive-emotional experience of fear of missing out.