Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the social media burnout scale

Social media usage is an essential part of modern life, and benefits individuals in many aspects, such as increasing well-being and psychological capital and decreasing depression. However, the cost of using such media is unavoidable. Among the undesirable outcomes, social media burnout has received particular attention, which has led to the identification of three facets: ambivalence, exhaustion, and depersonalization, as assessed by the Social Media Burnout Scale (SMBS), which was originally designed to assess Facebook. However, whether this scale could be adapted to other platforms and cultures remains unknown. The present study aimed at adapting the SMBS to a Chinese sample consisting of 1042 university students using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The EFA provided evidence that the three factor model showed the best fit: CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.947, RMSEA = 0.076, SRMR = 0.021. Furthermore, the CFA confirmed that the three factor model with modifications fit the data well: CFI = 0.976, TLI = 0.965, RMSEA = 0.067, SRMR = 0.043. Moreover, two statistically significant correlations were observed for the burnout score; a positive correlation with social media addiction and a negative correlation with core self-evaluation. The study showed that the Chinese version of the SMBS could be used as an effective tool to assess social media burnout among college students in China.