Development and validation of the Social Media Experience measure: Using objective assessment and adolescents' experience to inform its development

年轻人越来越多地使用社交媒体，引起了公众、媒体和政府的关注，并导致人们越来越关注社交媒体对年轻人心理健康、幸福感和孤独感的影响。这种担忧源于报告的心理健康问题增加以及这一人群中社交媒体使用的增加。然而，对这一领域的研究相对较新，证据也参差不齐。虽然社交媒体的一些经验可能具有挑战性，但没有足够的证据支持社交媒体从根本上是坏的。事实上，最近的证据挑战了这一点，并表明社交媒体和心理健康之间的联系可能是一个薄弱的联系，它的好处，在很大程度上被忽视了，也应该被考虑。这个研究领域已经遭受了一个快速变化的领域的后果，导致快速，但在方法上有缺陷的社交媒体体验的自我报告措施，阻碍了进展。我们已经确定了社交媒体参与和体验的自我报告测量中的三个潜在问题：1）大多数测量都没有询问年轻人的体验。这意味着正在为青年人制定社会媒体措施，而青年人没有任何投入。如果我们不考虑他们的意见，我们怎么能确定我们提出的问题是正确的呢？2)许多措施侧重于“上瘾的社交媒体”，但这个词主要是基于轶事证据。事实上，他们在这些措施中使用的问题是基于尼古丁依赖和赌博成瘾的标准。假设这些是相同的，可能会导致误导性的结论; 3）许多现有的措施没有使用严格和强大的理论和统计（心理测量）方法。因此，其有效性值得怀疑; 4）尽管与社交媒体的接触包括客观的数字行为，但在制定措施时没有考虑到这类信息和数据。然而，如果不对两者进行评估，我们就无法捕捉到社交媒体体验的全貌，因为它们都提供了独特的信息。 为了解决这些挑战和局限性报告在目前的文献中，我们提出了一个为期3年的项目，共同开发，与年轻人，一个全面的和免费提供的自我报告的社交媒体体验措施，将适合年轻人。这将考虑到现有的研究，客观的社交媒体数据，以及社交媒体专家，临床医生，家长/护理人员，教师和政策制定者的意见。重要的是，这项措施的制定将以青年人的观点和经验为指导。拟议的项目将遵循一种新的方法，将传统的量表开发方法和一种新的方法相结合，将客观（例如在线社交媒体评论）和主观（例如自我报告）评估进行三角测量。目前的项目非常注重年轻人的声音，它将以与年轻人合作的模式为基础。我们将借鉴不同的学科，包括数字行为和社交媒体，心理健康，孤独，心理测量学和计算机科学。该项目有可能改善我们衡量的方式，从而了解年轻人的社交媒体体验以及如何影响他们的心理健康，幸福和孤独。它还将与青年人进行有意义和富有成效的接触和建立伙伴关系，以推进这一领域的工作，并与主要利益攸关方分享他们的观点。

The increased use of social media among young people has attracted the attention of the public, the media and the government, and has led to growing concerns about its impact on young people's mental health, wellbeing and levels of loneliness. This concern stems from reported increase in mental health difficulties and increased social media use among this population. Research on this area is however relatively new and with mixed evidence. While some of the experiences with social media can be challenging, there is not sufficient evidence to support that social media is fundamentally bad. Indeed, recent evidence challenges this and suggests that the connection between social media and mental health might be a weak one, and its benefits, that have been largely overlooked, should also be considered. This area of research has suffered the consequences of a rapidly changing field, resulting in quick, but methodologically flawed self-report measures of social media experience, that hinders progress. We have identified three potential problems in the self-report measurement of social media engagement and experience: 1) Most measures were developed without asking young people's experiences. This means that social media measures are being developed for young people without young people having any input. How can we be sure we are asking the right things if we do not consider their views?; 2) Many measures focus on "addictive social media", however this term is based largely on anecdotal evidence. In fact, the questions they use in these measures are based on nicotine dependence and gambling addiction criteria. Assuming these are the same can lead to misleading conclusions; 3) Many of the existing measures were not developed using rigorous and robust theoretical and statistical (psychometric) methods. Their validity is therefore questionable; 4) Even though the engagement with social media includes objective digital behaviours, this kind of information and data have not been considered during the development of measures. We cannot capture however the full picture of social media experience without assessing both, because they each offer unique information. To address these challenges and limitations reported in the current literature we propose a 3-year project to co-develop, with young people, a comprehensive and freely available self-report social media experience measure that will be appropriate for young people. This will take into account existing research, objective social media data, and the views of social media experts, clinicians, parents/carers, teachers, and policy makers. Importantly, the development of the measure will be guided by the views and experiences of young people. The proposed project will follow a novel method that combines traditional methods of scale development and a novel approach that triangulates objective (e.g. online social media comments) and subjective (e.g. self-report) assessment. The current project has a strong focus on the voices of young people and it will be based on a co-production model with young people. We will draw from different disciplines including digital behaviour and social media, mental health, loneliness, psychometrics, and computer science. The project has the potential to improve the way we measure, and therefore understand, young people's social media experience and how that influences their mental health, wellbeing, and loneliness. It will also provide a meaningful and productive engagement and partnership with young people to advance this area of work and share their views to key stakeholders.