Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS)

The BSMAS assesses PSMU with six questions based on the components model of addiction (i.e., salience, mood, modification, tolerance, withdrawal conflict, and relapse) proposed by Griffiths (49). The BSMAS was developed by Andreassen et al. (45), and was used to assess social media addiction by symptoms and related negative outcomes due to problematic use over the past year (e.g., “How often during the last week have spent a lot of time thinking about social media or planned use of social media?”). All items of the BSMAS can be responded using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (very rarely) to 5 (very often). The total score is yielded by summating each items' raw score, with higher scores suggesting greater levels of PSMU symptoms. In the present study, the translated Bangla version of BSMAS was used to investigate PSMU. The BSMAS used in the study was adapted using a “back translation” procedure [i.e., (46)], similar to previous research conducted in Bangladesh (7, 47). In the present study, the Cronbach's alpha of BSMAS was 0.80.