The Social Media Use Scale: Development and Validation

Social media (SM) use has been primarily operationalized as frequency of use or as passive versus active use. We hypothesize that these constructs have shown mixed associations with psychological constructs because the factor structure underlying social media use (SMU) has not been fully identified. We conducted three studies with college students. In Study 1 (N = 176), we collected data about participants’ SMU, informing item generation. In Study 2 (N = 311), we tested two factor structures: (a) passive, active social, and active non-social and (b) a hypothesized four-factor structure. Neither confirmatory model produced acceptable fits, but an exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-factor model: belief-based, consumption-based, image-based, and comparison-based SMU. This four-factor structure was supported in Study 3 (N = 397), which was preregistered, via a confirmatory factor analysis. The subscale items showed good internal consistencies, and evidence is presented for convergent validity. These factors represent a novel classification of people’s SMU that can be measured with the Social Media Use Scale.