Psychometric properties of three measures of “Facebook engagement and/or addiction” among a sample of English speaking Pakistani university students

For researchers interested in measuring the construct of “Facebook engagement and/or addiction,” there are a number of existing measures including the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, the Facebook Intensity Scale, and the Addictive Tendencies Scale. Currently, there is limited data on the psychometric properties of these three scales, especially among South Asian samples. The present aim was to address this shortfall. A sample of 308 English-speaking Pakistani university students completed the scales, in their original English versions, on two occasions separated by four weeks. Results demonstrated that for each of the scales, across both administrations, satisfactory psychometric properties were found, including internal reliability, temporal stability, and construct validity. Moreover, for these three scales, using confirmatory factor analysis, a one-factor structure was generally found to be a good description of the data for both male and female samples. These data provide further evidence for the reliability and validity of three scales concerned with “Facebook engagement and/or addiction.

Problematic social media use: results from a large-scale nationally representative adolescent sample

Despite social media use being one of the most popular activities among adolescents, prevalence estimates among teenage samples of social media (problematic) use are lacking in the field. The present study surveyed a nationally representative Hungarian sample comprising 5,961 adolescents as part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD). Using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) and based on latent profile analysis, 4.5% of the adolescents belonged to the at-risk group, and reported low self-esteem, high level of depression symptoms, and elevated social media use. Results also demonstrated that BSMAS has appropriate psychometric properties. It is concluded that adolescents at-risk of problematic social media use should be targeted by school-based prevention and intervention programs