Reliability and Validity Study of the Social Media Addiction Scale:

Social media addiction (SMA) has become a prevalent issue among individuals worldwide, including students at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. To address the lack of a validated and reliable measurement tool for assessing SMA in this context, the current study aimed to develop and validate the Social Media Addiction Scale-Student Form (SMAS-SF). A literature review was conducted to identify the relevant dimensions of SMA. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were employed to validate the SMAS-SF. The findings demonstrated that the SMAS-SF possesses strong psychometric properties, including construct validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and internal consistency reliability. The SMAS-SF comprises 23 items measuring four factors: virtual tolerance, virtual communication, virtual problem, and virtual information. This scale can be effectively used to assess SMA among students aged 18-30 years. Future research could explore the relationship between the SMAS-SF and various variables and investigate its applicability in diverse populations.