Excessive use of Twitter among college students in the UK: Validation of the Microblog Excessive Use Scale and relationship to social interaction and loneliness

Microblogging on sites like Twitter is a growing and popular trend among young people. Apparently, some users of these microblogs exhibit addiction-like symptoms. Until recently, there was no psychometric scale to measure the excessive use of Twitter. The development of the Microblog Excessive Use Scale (MEUS) in 2014 proved a positive step in assessing this phenomenon. In the current study, we employed the MEUS to assess excessive use of Twitter in a sample of 256 college students (53.1% female; mean age 21.4 years) in the UK. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), calculation of criterion-related and concurrent validity and reliability were performed to assess the scale's psychometric properties. The MEUS was found to be a valid instrument for assessing excessive use of Twitter among UK college students. In addition, we found that real life social interaction was negatively associated with excessive use of Twitter and this relationship was mediated by loneliness. We compared our results with results from a previous study in which the MEUS was developed and noted some interesting differences, which might be explained by cultural differences between samples in the two studies.