Scale library · Psychology & mental health
Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale: Andreassen (2016)
The BSMAS measures addictive social media use based on Griffiths' six components of behavioral addiction: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict and relapse. Andreassen et al. (2016) adapted it from the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (Andreassen et al., 2012) by replacing 'Facebook' with 'social media' in general. It is common in theses on students' Facebook and TikTok addiction and on links between social media use and depression, anxiety, sleep and academic performance.
Cite the original, not the blog.
- Model or scale: BSMAS
- Constructs: 1
- Items: 6
Original English items
Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.
Social Media Addiction (BSMAS, 6 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| SM1 | You spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning how to use it. | No |
| SM2 | You feel an urge to use social media more and more. | No |
| SM3 | You use social media in order to forget about personal problems. | No |
| SM4 | You have tried to cut down on the use of social media without success. | No |
| SM5 | You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using social media. | No |
| SM6 | You use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies. | No |
Response scale
5-point frequency scale, not an agreement scale: 1 = Very rarely, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Often, 5 = Very often (the question version asks about the past year). Summing the 6 items gives 6–30; higher scores mean greater risk of addiction. There are no reverse-coded items.
Licence and permission
The items are published in academic research and widely used free of charge for research. The University of Salford scale library asks only that the authors be cited; cite Andreassen et al. (2016) and the original scale by Andreassen et al. (2012).
Sources (APA 7)
- Andreassen, C. S., Billieux, J., Griffiths, M. D., Kuss, D. J., Demetrovics, Z., Mazzoni, E., & Pallesen, S. (2016). The relationship between addictive use of social media and video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: A large-scale cross-sectional study. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 30(2), 252–262. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000160
- Andreassen, C. S., Torsheim, T., Brunborg, G. S., & Pallesen, S. (2012). Development of a Facebook addiction scale. Psychological Reports, 110(2), 501–517. https://doi.org/10.2466/02.09.18.PR0.110.2.501-517
Vietnamese translation
A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.