using expo and @react-native-community/async-storage

Instead of importing from @react-native-async-storage/async-storage in your Message.js file try importing @react-native-community/async-storage.

This is the package you’ve installed, it was correctly installed under @react-native-community directory in node_modules as you noticed.

-import AsyncStorage from '@react-native-async-storage/async-storage';
+import AsyncStorage from '@react-native-community/async-storage';