Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale

Abstract

The Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale (LSMDS) is an empirically validated psychometric instrument specifically engineered to assess problematic social media engagement and digital dependency among emerging adults and university students within the unique sociocultural landscape of Lebanon. Recognizing that technological behaviors are deeply mediated by contextual stressors, cultural communication norms, and systemic infrastructural conditions, the LSMDS was developed to transcend the limitations of Western-normed instruments that often fail to capture regional nuances. The instrument synthesizes core behavioral paradigms from prior inventories—including the Smartphone Addiction Inventory (SPAI), the Online Fear of Missing Out Inventory (ON-FoMO), and the Social Media Disorder Scale (SMD)—into a unified, 27-item multidimensional architecture.

Psychometrically calibrated using an exploratory factor analysis with oblique rotation, the scale resolves into three correlated dimensions: Problematic Smartphone Use (11 items), Social Media Validation Seeking (8 items), and Social Media Withdrawal Symptoms (8 items). The 27-item scale explains 52.91% of the total variance. The LSMDS demonstrates excellent internal consistency, exhibiting a global Cronbach’s alpha of 0.931, with subscale alphas ranging from 0.847 to 0.913. Convergent validity is evidenced by strong correlations with established metrics of digital addiction, including the SPAI (r = 0.863) and ON-FoMO (r = 0.888), alongside a moderate-to-high correlation with the SMD (r = 0.621). Designed for clinical screening, epidemiological surveillance, and behavioral health research, the LSMDS provides mental health professionals and researchers with a culturally grounded diagnostic metric tailored to post-crisis socioeconomic contexts.

Keywords

Social Media Dependency, Psychometrics, Behavioral Addiction, Problematic Smartphone Use, Validation Seeking, Withdrawal Symptoms, Fear of Missing Out, Cross-Cultural Validation, University Students, Digital Mental Health, Lebanon, Factor Analysis

Authors

The Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale was conceptualized, psychometrically validated, and published by a multidisciplinary consortium of researchers from clinical epidemiology, toxicology, and pharmaceutical sciences:

• Samar Younes (Corresponding Author: [email protected]) — School of Pharmacy, Lebanese International University, Bekaa, Lebanon.
• Zeinab Abbas — INSPECT-LB (Institut National de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie Clinique et de Toxicologie-Liban), Beirut, Lebanon.
• Chadia Haddad — INSPECT-LB (Institut National de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie Clinique et de Toxicologie-Liban), Beirut, Lebanon.
• Daniele Saade — INSPECT-LB (Institut National de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie Clinique et de Toxicologie-Liban), Beirut, Lebanon.
• Nisreen Mourad — School of Pharmacy, Lebanese International University, Bekaa, Lebanon.
• Hala Sacre — INSPECT-LB (Institut National de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie Clinique et de Toxicologie-Liban), Beirut, Lebanon.
• Amal Al-Hajje — INSPECT-LB (Institut National de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie Clinique et de Toxicologie-Liban), Beirut, Lebanon.
• Pascale Salameh — INSPECT-LB (Institut National de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie Clinique et de Toxicologie-Liban), Beirut, Lebanon.

Purpose

The primary objective governing the creation of the Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale (LSMDS) is the provision of a culturally sensitive, methodologically sound psychometric instrument capable of identifying and quantifying digital dependency in non-Western populations, specifically within the Levantine Arab context. Over the past two decades, psychometric scholarship on behavioral addictions has predominantly imported screening inventories developed within high-income Western countries or East Asian settings. While such inventories evaluate universal neurocognitive markers of behavioral addiction—such as salience and tolerance—they systematically overlook the socio-ecological drivers of digital technology use that manifest in societies marked by collectivism, acute political turbulence, and ongoing infrastructural and economic instability.

In Lebanon, these societal factors are prominent. The contemporary Lebanese populace navigates an unprecedented economic collapse characterized by currency devaluation, rolling electrical blackouts, banking restrictions, and high youth unemployment. In this environment, digital platforms cease to operate merely as leisurely entertainment channels; instead, they become indispensable infrastructures for livelihood maintenance, currency exchange monitoring, diasporic family connectivity, crisis news navigation, and escapism from chronic psychosocial adversity. Consequently, applying traditional Western psychometric scales without contextual calibration risks high rates of false-positive or false-negative diagnoses, misinterpreting compensatory survival behaviors as pathology or failing to detect clinical distress concealed beneath high baseline screen time.

The LSMDS fulfills vital functions across clinical, university, and public health settings:

• Epidemiological Surveillance: It establishes standardized prevalence baselines for problematic digital dependency among young Lebanese adults, allowing public health agencies to monitor longitudinal trends in behavioral health.
• Clinical Triage and Diagnostic Screening: It equips university counseling centers, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists with a diagnostic aid that discriminates between normative functional connectivity and maladaptive, compulsive dependency.
• Evaluation of Interventions: The scale offers a sensitive outcome metric to evaluate the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapies, digital detox regimens, and institutional psychoeducational programs designed to enhance digital hygiene.
• Etiological Research: It enables empirical investigations into how digital dependency interacts with comorbid psychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, sleep architecture disruption, and academic attrition.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the LSMDS is Social Media Dependency, operationalized as a multidimensional behavioral addiction characterized by compulsive device interaction, maladaptive social validation mechanisms, and acute psychological distress upon disconnection. Rather than adopting a unidimensional framework that merely tallies screen hours, the LSMDS models dependency as an interactive syndrome combining physical interface habits, socio-emotional vulnerabilities, and neurovegetative withdrawal phenomena. The construct is articulated across three correlated, theoretically grounded dimensions:

1. Problematic Smartphone Use (11 Items)

This subscale captures the behavioral, habitual, and compulsive mechanics of device engagement. Rooted in classical concepts of behavioral salience and loss of self-regulation, it measures the extent to which an individual enters automatic, unreflective behavioral loops characterized by frequent checking, involuntary device handling, and excessive screen time that encroaches upon necessary life activities. It assesses the behavioral displacement of essential academic, vocational, and social obligations, including nocturnal device checking that degrades sleep latency and sleep efficiency. Behaviors within this dimension reflect diminished impulse control, where the smartphone serves as the physical portal through which social platforms monopolize cognitive attention.

2. Social Media Validation Seeking (8 Items)

This dimension operationalizes the social-cognitive and affective motivators underpinning persistent platform access. Grounded in theories of contingent self-esteem and the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), this subscale evaluates an individual’s reliance on digital metrics—such as likes, shares, comments, and story views—for psychological equilibrium and personal worth. It captures upward social comparison tendencies, the compulsive need to project an idealized self-presentation, hyper-vigilance regarding peer activities, and the distress generated by feeling socially excluded or overlooked in virtual spheres. In collectivist cultural environments, where peer appraisal and group cohesion exert considerable normative pressure, this validation loop serves as a potent reinforcer of dependency.

3. Social Media Withdrawal Symptoms (8 Items)

Reflecting the neurobiological and affective core of addiction constructs, this subscale quantifies the acute emotional dysregulation, psychological distress, and cognitive preoccupation that arise when an individual is forcibly or voluntarily separated from social media access. Symptoms assessed include irritability, agitation, anxiety, mood lability, boredom intolerance, and obsessive cognitive intrusion regarding missed notifications or unread messages. It also taps into physiological and psychosomatic manifestations, such as phantom vibration syndrome and heightened autonomic tension during periods of cellular signal loss, battery exhaustion, or power outages.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the LSMDS is grounded in an integration of four foundational models in clinical psychology, psychopathology, and media studies:

The Cognitive-Behavioral Model of Pathological Internet Use

Developed by Richard A. Davis (2001), this model posits that pathological technological behaviors arise from a convergence of pre-existing vulnerabilities (e.g., social anxiety, depressive tendencies) and maladaptive cognitions regarding oneself and the online environment. Davis differentiates between generalized and specific internet use disorders. The LSMDS builds upon this model by operationalizing maladaptive cognitions—such as “I am only valued if my posts receive social engagement” or “Disconnection leads to immediate social obsolescence”—which initiate and sustain compulsive behavioral checking loops.

Compensatory Internet Use Theory (CIUT)

Formulated by Daniel Kardefelt-Winther (2014), CIUT argues that excessive digital engagement represents an active, compensatory coping strategy aimed at mitigating real-world psychological distress, socio-environmental deprivation, or developmental stressors. When life circumstances create severe deficits in autonomy, financial security, or social stability, digital ecosystems provide an accessible, low-friction arena to obtain perceived competence, relatedness, and agency. Within the Lebanese framework, marked by acute socioeconomic challenges, the LSMDS captures how digital platforms act as compensatory emotional buffers, tracking when functional coping degrades into compulsive, disruptive dependency.

Griffiths’ Components Model of Addiction

The LSMDS aligns with Mark Griffiths’ (2005) six core criteria of behavioral addiction:

1. Salience: Social media dominants thinking, feelings, and behavior.
2. Mood Modification: Engaging with platforms yields an emotional high or numbs negative affect.
3. Tolerance: Escalating screen time is required to attain identical emotional satisfaction.
4. Withdrawal Symptoms: Affective and psychosomatic distress emerge upon platform cessation.
5. Conflict: Digital habits generate interpersonal, academic, and occupational friction.
6. Relapse: Unsuccessful efforts to curtail or self-regulate usage patterns.

Sociocultural Adaptation and Social Comparison Theory

Leon Festinger’s (1954) Social Comparison Theory highlights individuals’ innate drive to evaluate themselves against others. In digital ecosystems, algorithmic curation favors idealized portrayals of reality, exacerbating upward social comparisons. The LSMDS integrates this phenomenon through its Social Media Validation Seeking dimension, accounting for the unique sociolinguistic and collectivist dynamics of Lebanese society, where familial reputation, extended social networks, and social signaling amplify the psychological stakes of peer validation.

Validity

The psychometric validation of the LSMDS followed rigorous methodological standards to establish construct, convergent, and discriminant validity across a diverse cohort of emerging adults.

Construct and Content Validity

Content validity was established through an iterative multi-phase development protocol. The research team generated an initial, exhaustive pool of 55 items derived from comprehensive literature syntheses of behavioral addiction, nomophobia, FoMO, and digital pathology, as well as focus group evaluations with Lebanese university students. A panel of academic psychometricians, clinical epidemiologists, and psychiatrists reviewed the item pool to evaluate linguistic clarity, semantic equivalence, cultural relevance, and theoretical alignment. Following expert consensus, items exhibiting cross-cultural ambiguity, redundancies, or weak domain representativeness were systematically pruned, resulting in a streamlined draft submitted to empirical factor analytic testing.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity was evaluated by examining bivariate Pearson correlation coefficients between the LSMDS total score, its subscales, and established, externally validated psychometric tools measuring digital addiction and psychological distress.

The substantial correlations with the SPAI (r = 0.863) and ON-FoMO (r = 0.888) confirm that the LSMDS accurately measures compulsive smartphone interaction and social exclusion anxiety. Concurrently, the moderate-to-high correlation observed with the Social Media Disorder Scale (r = 0.621) confirms that while the LSMDS aligns with overarching digital addiction constructs, it captures unique variance associated with culturally specific validation-seeking behaviors and regional coping strategies, avoiding simple redundancy with older Western instruments.

Reliability

The reliability of the Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale was examined via classical test theory metrics, focusing on internal consistency across the complete scale and its subscales within a validation sample of 511 university students.

Internal Consistency Metrics

The global 27-item LSMDS demonstrated high internal consistency, yielding an overall Cronbach’s alpha of 0.931. This coefficient confirms that the items share strong common variance without exceeding the threshold (typically α > 0.95) that indicates excessive item redundancy.

Corrected item-total correlations for all retained 27 items exceeded the recommended psychometric threshold of 0.40, ranging from 0.442 to 0.768. Removing any single item did not produce an increase in the global Cronbach’s alpha, supporting the retention of all 27 indicators.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the LSMDS was established through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) conducted on data from 511 university students.

Sample Characteristics and Pre-Estimation Diagnostics

The validation sample comprised 511 participants enrolled across major public and private universities in Lebanon. The mean age was 21.04 years (SD = 3.52). In terms of demographics, 70.6% identified as female, 97.1% reported being single, and 75.3% were unemployed. Data suitability for factor extraction was confirmed by the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy, which exceeded 0.90, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity, which achieved statistical significance (p < 0.001), indicating adequate shared correlation matrices for factor analysis.

Factor Extraction and Rotation Methodology

Because the underlying constructs of behavioral addiction—compulsion, validation, and withdrawal—theoretically intercorrelate, the developers employed an oblique rotation (Oblimin) following factor extraction. Dimensionality was guided by three complementary criteria:

• Kaiser’s eigenvalue-greater-than-one rule (eigenvalues > 1.0).
• Catell’s scree plot inflection point analysis.
• Horn’s Parallel Analysis, contrasting empirical eigenvalues against synthetic random data sets.

Factor Loadings and Variance Accounted For

Factor retention criteria converged on a robust three-factor solution accounting for 52.91% of the total cumulative variance:

• Factor 1: Problematic Smartphone Use (11 items, eigenvalue ≈ 8.84, accounting for ~32.74% of the variance). Items exhibited primary pattern loadings ranging from 0.482 to 0.812.
• Factor 2: Social Media Validation Seeking (8 items, eigenvalue ≈ 3.21, accounting for ~11.89% of the variance). Items exhibited primary pattern loadings ranging from 0.435 to 0.784.
• Factor 3: Social Media Withdrawal Symptoms (8 items, eigenvalue ≈ 2.24, accounting for ~8.28% of the variance). Items exhibited primary pattern loadings ranging from 0.418 to 0.756.

During the item reduction process, items with factor loadings below 0.40, those with high cross-loadings (differences < 0.15 across factors), or those exhibiting conceptual misalignment were systematically pruned. This refined the initial 55-item pool down to 27 structurally sound items.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale (LSMDS)
• Instrument Nature: Quantitative, multidimensional self-report psychometric rating scale
• Target Population: University undergraduates, emerging adults, and young adults (aged 18 and older)
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil inventory or secure online digital survey
• Linguistic Versions: Arabic (original development language, culturally adapted through rigorous forward- and back-translation); research-validated English adaptation
• Completion Duration: Approximately 7 to 10 minutes
• Total Item Count: 27 items
• Dimensional Structure: Three correlated subscales:
  • Problematic Smartphone Use: 11 items
  • Social Media Validation Seeking: 8 items
  • Social Media Withdrawal Symptoms: 8 items
• Item Scoring and Response Format: Rated using a standard multi-point Likert response scale measuring behavioral frequency and subjective agreement (ranging from low endorsement [1] to high endorsement [5]).
• Scoring Interpretation:
  • Individual subscale scores are computed by summing the endorsed values of their constituent items.
  • A global Composite Dependency Score is calculated by summing all 27 items (theoretical score range: 27 to 135). Higher composite scores indicate more severe behavioral dependency, greater validation-seeking compulsivity, and higher risk of withdrawal-induced emotional distress upon platform disconnection.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale was validated and published in 2026. The foundational psychometric validation study appeared in the open-access peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0344535), published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license.

Under this open-access framework, the theoretical model, psychometric findings, and factor structures are freely accessible for scholarly inquiry, non-commercial education, and public health research, provided appropriate attribution is accorded to the primary developers (Younes et al., 2026). However, the complete Arabic and translated instrument items remain under the intellectual custody of the corresponding author and collaborating institutions (Lebanese International University and INSPECT-LB). Researchers, clinicians, and health organizations seeking access to the exact item wording, clinical implementation manuals, or diagnostic cut-off criteria should formally contact the corresponding author, Dr. Samar Younes, via email at [email protected].

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Younes, S., Abbas, Z., Haddad, C., Saade, D., Mourad, N., Sacre, H., Al-Hajje, A., & Salameh, P. (2026). Lebanese Social Media Dependency Scale. PLoS ONE, 21, Article e0344535. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344535

Items of the Scale