A brief report on the psychometric properties of mindful use of social media scale: preliminary findings from four countries

Pathology-based theoretical and measurement frameworks of social media use (e.g., problematic use based on addiction model) have advanced considerably in recent years, offering valuable insights into what constitutes maladaptive use. Nonetheless, in addition to understanding problematic engagement, it is important to explore what characterizes adaptive social media use. Assessing mindful awareness—a positive state often produce beneficial outcomes—during social media engagement may offer a pathway for examining one of the aspects of adaptive use. Surveying 1,532 social media users from Australia (n = 246; M_age = 36.35), Iran (n = 237; M_age= 31.68), the Philippines (n = 729; M_age = 23.04), and Hungary (n = 320; M_age= 38.65), this pilot study examined the factor structure, internal consistency, and measurement invariance of the recently developed Mindful Use of Social Media Scale (MUSMS). The unidimensional structure and sound psychometric properties of the MUSMS were supported across the samples. However, measurement invariance testing showed poor model fit at both the metric and scalar levels, suggesting that neither the strength of factor loadings nor the intercepts can be considered equivalent across the samples. These preliminary findings suggest that the MUSMS is a valid and reliable measure of mindful social media use within individual cultural contexts. However, its functioning when the objective is to compare mindful social media use across different cultures may still require further psychometric investigation and empirical support before confident conclusions can be drawn.