Where Do Young Adults Seek Fulfillment: Online or Offline? Need Crafting Profiles, Well-Being, and Social Media Use

Although several strategies have been developed to support healthier social media use (SMU) among young people, most interventions focus on quantitative use reduction. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, this study examines young adults’ ability to proactively seek out experiences on social media that fulfill their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, a skill referred to as online need crafting. While general (offline) need crafting has gained scholarly attention in recent years, this study is the first to investigate online need crafting as a complementary process to its offline counterpart. Using a person-centered clustering approach in a large sample of college students (N = 5310; M age = 22.5; 28.6% male; 88.1% Belgian nationality), four profiles were identified based on levels of online and offline need crafting. These profiles were meaningfully associated with a range of outcomes, namely need-based experiences, well-being, ill-being, sleep quality, maladaptive, even after controlling for time spent on SMU. High Need Crafters (Profile 1; high online and offline crafting, 12.8%) reported the most adaptive pattern across all outcomes, whereas Low Need Crafters (Profile 4, 31.5%) reported the least favorable outcomes. Imbalanced profiles (Profile 2: high online/average offline, 36.4%; Profile 3: low online/average offline, 31.5%) showed mixed outcomes, suggesting that while online need crafting may offer benefits, it appears insufficient in the absence of strong offline need crafting. These findings highlight the value of fostering need crafting skills across both domains as a promising foundation for interventions aiming to promote meaningful social media engagement and youth well-being.Keywords: Social Media Use, Young Adults, Self-Determination Theory, Need Crafting, Well-Being, Social Media Interventions