Psychometric Validation and Factor Structure of the Appearance-Related Social Media Consciousness Scale Among Emerging Adults

The highly-visual nature of many social media platforms encourages appearance-related social media consciousness (ASMC), or the persistent awareness of how attractive one might look to a social media audience. The recently developed ASMC Scale, previously validated with high school-aged adolescents, provides a promising tool for systematically examining ASMC and associations with mental health symptoms. The current study examined the psychometric properties of the ASMC Scale among emerging adult men and women. Participants for Study 1 were 428 emerging adults (M age = 21.9) from five Anglophone, industrialized countries (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Results from Study 1 indicate that the 13-item ASMC Scale has a unidimensional structure, strong internal consistency, and measurement invariance across gender and sexual orientation subgroups. Participants from Study 2 were 296 U.S. college students (M age = 18.5). Results from Study 2 demonstrated the convergent validity (i.e., associations with related offline appearance concerns and cognitions) and incremental validity (i.e., associations with depressive symptoms and disordered eating) of the ASMC Scale. Findings suggest the ASMC Scale can be reliably used to assess the extent of emerging adults’ awareness of their appearance on social media, aiding future research investigating emerging adults’ social media experiences and mental health.