Measuring the Impact of Social Media on Young People’s Mental Health: Development and Validation of the Social Media-Induced Tendency Scale

Table 1

Exploratory factor analyses of 15-item social media-induced depression tendency scale.

		Component
		1	2	4
Factor 1	Sensitivity/attention seeking
Sm31	I expect people to pay attention to whatever I post	.71
Sm20	I want to be popular, that is why I frequently use the social media platform	.70
Sm28	What my online friends think of me is important to me	.66
Sm22	It hurts me when one of my “followers” “unfollow” or “unfriends me”	.62
Sm16	My posts reflect on my current mood	.51
Factor 2	Worthlessness/inferiority/negative affect
Sm9	Most of the thing I see on social media makes me feel like hurting myself		.82
Sm8	Seeing young people of my age displaying financial independence makes me feel inferior		.65
Sm15	Going through my social media pages makes me feel disappointed in myself		.59
Sm26	Stories of unfortunate events make me feel sad		.80
Sm30	People can be inconsiderate of others on the social media platforms		.75
Sm19	I show empathy for others’ sad feelings on social media		.67
Factor 3	Escapism/reality avoidance
Sm24	Social media is full of lonely and depressed people			.65
Sm29	Social media is an excellent place to hide my weaknesses			.61
Sm23	I feel more comfortable speaking online with an online friend than in person			.59
Sm27	Stories of young people committing suicide make it feel like an easy escape from reality			.57