The development and validation of the extended active-passive social media use scale

作者：Xiang Niu, Philippe Verduyn, James Gaskin, Sebastian Scherr, Dean McDonnell, Jin‐Liang Wang · 发表于：Cyberpsychology Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.5817/cp2025-3-1 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Impact of Technology on Adolescents、Digital Marketing and Social Media、Technology Adoption and User Behaviour

Mixed findings regarding the relationship between social media (SM) use and mental health have left the research field at somewhat of a crossroads, with one significant requirement being a comprehensive tool to measure SM use. In an effort to advance relevant research, this study extends the common ‘active-passive model’ of SM use to develop and validate a comprehensive scale. This scale will measure complex SM behaviors, focusing on subtypes of active and passive use. A 29-item Extended Active-Passive Use Scale (E-APUS) developed for adolescents and young adults was validated using a total sample of individuals (N = 4,372) from four independent Chinese samples. An exploratory factor analysis with N1 = 305 and a confirmatory factor analysis with N2 = 289 revealed six dimensions characterizing engagement on SM. These dimensions include targeted-warm use, non-targeted-warm use, cold use, browsing high self-relevance success stories, browsing low self-relevance success stories, and browsing failure stories. The study confirmed measurement invariance (N3 = 3,524) across genders and educational stage groups (i.e., adolescents vs. young adults) through (multi-group) confirmatory factor analyses. Convergent validity of the E-APUS scale was established with active-passive SM use measures, and criterion validity was supported using indicators of subjective well-being. However, discriminant validity was comparatively lower for personality factors. The E-APUS scale exhibited good intern...