Development and psychometric evaluation of a Turkish adaptation of the social media flow scale

The present study adapted the Social Media Flow Scale (SMFS), developed by Brailovskaia et al. (2020), into Turkish and evaluated its psychometric properties. Data from 732 social media users (N = 732; 65.4% female; Mage = 31.19 years, SDage = 11.13) were collected by an online survey. A standard procedure, including forward and back translation, was used to ensure the linguistic validity of the Turkish SMFS. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original five-factor structure, comprising focused attention, enjoyment, curiosity, telepresence, and time distortion. Fit indices revealed a good fit of the model (comparative fit index = .975, Tucker-Lewis index = .960, root mean square error of approximation = .066, and standardized root mean square residual = .033). All subscales demonstrated acceptable to excellent internal consistency (α = 0.789–0.888; ω = 0.791–0.942). Convergent and discriminant validity of the SMFS were supported by average variance extraction, composite reliability, and heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations. Analyses of concurrent validity showed that total scores on the SMFS were significantly positively related to social media continuance, social media-related fear of missing out, social media addiction, and problematic smartphone use (r = .515 to .689). The findings suggest that flow in social media use acts as a double-edged sword by both maintaining engagement and being associated with problematic use. In sum, the results indicate that the Turkish SMFS is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing multidimensional flow experiences in social media contexts and can be utilized in research on digital well-being and addictive behaviors.