MINI REVIEW article
Front. Hum. Dyn.
Sec. Digital Impacts
Digital Human Dynamics in Socio-Educational Contexts: A Review of Evidence from Scales
Provisionally accepted
HUGO ANTONIO MARTÍNEZ CAÑESTRO1
MARÍA DEL MAR MEGÍAS TORRES2*
MARÍA DEL MAR MARTÍNEZ LENTISCO3
ISABEL DAMIANA ALONSO LÓPEZ1- 1Universidad de Almería Departamento de Educación Almería, Spain, Almería, Spain
- 2Junta de Andalucia Consejeria de Educacion, Seville, Spain
- 3Universidad de Almeria Departamento de Enfermeria Fisioterapia y Medicina, Almería, Spain
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Social media use has become integral to daily life, raising increasing concern about its addictive potential, particularly among adolescents. This mini-review combined a structured systematic search and complementary narrative exploration to identify and analyze 27 validated instruments assessing social media addiction. The first phase followed PRISMA-based criteria across four databases (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Redalyc), while subsequent phases expanded the search to include related and recent literature up to 2025. The instruments encompass physiological, behavioral, cognitive– emotional, and social dimensions of addiction—such as tolerance, withdrawal, preoccupation, mood modification, and time displacement—and were validated in both Western and non-Western contexts. Western-developed scales (e.g., BSMAS, SMD Scale) demonstrated stronger psychometric consistency and larger samples, whereas regional adaptations improved cultural relevance but require broader validation. The absence of unified diagnostic criteria continues to limit cross-cultural comparison. These findings underscore the need for internationally standardized and culturally sensitive tools to improve early detection and cross-context comparability in adolescent social media addiction research.
Keywords: Social Media, addictions, adolescents, Social media addiction, scales, Instruments, Questionnaires
Received: 11 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 MARTÍNEZ CAÑESTRO, MEGÍAS TORRES, MARTÍNEZ LENTISCO and ALONSO LÓPEZ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: MARÍA DEL MAR MEGÍAS TORRES, marmegias@hotmail.com
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