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，这引起了公众、媒体和政府的关注，并导致人们越来越担心社交媒体对年轻人的心理健康、幸福感和孤独程度的影响。这一担忧源于有报道称，这一人群的心理健康困难增加，社交媒体的使用增加。然而，关于这一领域的研究是相对较新的，证据喜忧参半。虽然使用社交媒体的一些经历可能具有挑战性，但没有足够的证据支持社交媒体从根本上说是不好的。事实上，最近的证据对这一点提出了挑战，并表明社交媒体和心理健康之间的联系可能很弱，它的好处也应该被考虑，这些好处在很大程度上被忽视了。这一研究领域受到了一个快速变化的领域的影响，导致了对社交媒体体验的快速、但在方法上存在缺陷的自我报告衡量标准，这阻碍了进展。在社交媒体参与度和体验的自我报告测量中，我们发现了三个潜在的问题：1)大多数测量是在没有询问年轻人经历的情况下制定的。这意味着，正在为没有年轻人参与的年轻人制定社交媒体措施。如果我们不考虑他们的观点，我们怎么能确定我们提出的问题是正确的？2)许多措施都聚焦于“令人上瘾的社交媒体”，然而这个词主要是基于轶事证据。事实上，他们在这些测量中使用的问题是基于尼古丁依赖和赌博成瘾的标准。假设这些都是相同的，可能会导致误导性的结论；3)许多现有的测量方法并不是使用严格和强大的理论和统计(心理测量学)方法开发的。因此，它们的有效性值得怀疑；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这种信息和数据。然而，如果不对两者进行评估，我们就无法全面了解社交媒体体验，因为它们都提供了独特的信息。为了应对当前文献中报告的这些挑战和限制，我们提出了一个为期3年的项目，与年轻人共同开发一种适合年轻人的全面和免费的自我报告社交媒体体验衡量标准。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/照顾者、教师和政策制定者的观点。重要的是，这项措施的制定将以年轻人的意见和经验为指导。拟议的项目将采用一种新的方法，它结合了传统的量表开发方法和一种对客观(如在线社交媒体评论)和主观(如自我报告)评估进行三角测量的新方法。目前的项目非常关注年轻人的声音，它将以与年轻人联合制作的模式为基础。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和理解年轻人社交媒体体验的方式，以及这如何影响他们的心理健康、幸福感和孤独感。它还将为青年提供有意义和富有成效的参与和伙伴关系，以推动这一领域的工作，并向主要利益攸关方分享他们的意见。

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.