Addictive use of social media scales are not necessarily measuring problematic behavior: Evidence from the...

Most problematic social media use (PSMU) screening questionnaires rely on criteria derived from substance use disorders and assess a unitary construct. Current evidence suggests that this unidimensional model may conflate genuine symptoms ("core" criteria) with features that fail to discriminate between pathological and intensive use ("peripheral" criteria), potentially pathologizing social media use. We reanalyzed the internal structure and criterion validity of the widely used Social Media Disorder Scale (SMD), comparing three different theory-based latent structures. Secondary analysis of data from the cross-sectional international 2017 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study, comprising schools from 43 regions from 40 different countries. A total of 190,335 students (51.87% females) with a mean age of 13.58 years (SD = 1.62) were analyzed. Participants completed the SMD, the Symptom Checklist, and the Cantril Ladder to measure life satisfaction. Across most regions, a two-factor model that treated salience and tolerance as peripheral criteria, separated from other SMD items treated as core criteria, provided a superior fit compared with a unidimensional solution. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses corroborated the distinction between core and peripheral features. Alignment optimization showed that only 23% of the parameters were noninvariant across regions under this solution. Weak positive associations emerged between the core factor and psychological and sleep problems, and a weak negative association with life satisfaction. The peripheral factor was negligibly or nonsignificantly associated with these outcomes. This study challenges the use of unidimensional scoring of PSMU measures and emphasizes the need to improve screening instruments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).