Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale

BSMAS

psychologyhealth sciencessocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

A 6-item scale applying the components model of addiction (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, relapse) to social-media use over the past year.

Items

Response format

5-point frequency scale (1-5)

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Problematic social-media use was measured with the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS; Andreassen et al., 2016), a 6-item scale with good internal consistency (α ≈ .88).

Citing this in a methods section? This scale spans more than one discipline, so the style depends on where you publish. See the APA 7 or Vancouver guides, or compare all six citation styles.

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Reliability & validation

Validation population

Norwegian cross-sectional sample (Andreassen et al., 2016)

Cronbach's α

0.88

Response anchors

Very rarely · Rarely · Sometimes · Often · Very often

Known limitations

The 'addiction' framing is debated; the scale identifies at-risk use, not a formal disorder, and thresholds are not standardized across cultures.

Original citation

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

Questions researchers ask

What does the BSMAS measure?

A 6-item scale applying the components model of addiction (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, relapse) to social-media use over the past year.

How many items does the BSMAS have?

The Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) has 6 items.

Is the BSMAS free to use?

The BSMAS is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the BSMAS reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.88. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the BSMAS, and how do I cite it?

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Library entry verified July 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.