Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

Understand your landscape to de-risk change initiatives. What can you (not) manage?

why things change, or don't

Models and theories in behaviour change science are not in short supply, but they almost exclusively pertain to a particular facet of behaviour, such as automaticity or reasoned action, or to a sin...

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Transboundary river basins (TRBs) are at an increasing risk of water scarcity-induced conflicts. Nearly 40% of global TRBs could face such conflicts by 2050, but measures such as intra-basin cooperation could reduce this proportion to less than 10%.

A growing number of self-report measures aim to define interactions with social media in a pathological behavior framework, often using terminology focused on identifying those who are ‘addicted’ to engaging with others online. Specifically, measures of ‘social media addiction’ focus on motivations for online social information seeking, which could relate to motivations for offline social information seeking. However, it could be the case that these same measures could reveal a pattern of friend addiction in general. This study develops the Offline-Friend Addiction Questionnaire (O-FAQ) by re-wording items from highly cited pathological social media use scales to reflect “spending time with friends”. Our methodology for validation follows the current literature precedent in the development of social media ‘addiction’ scales. The O-FAQ had a three-factor solution in an exploratory sample of N = 807 and these factors were stable in a 4-week retest (r = .72 to .86) and was validated against personality traits, and risk-taking behavior, in conceptually plausible directions. Using the same polythetic classification techniques as pathological social media use studies, we were able to classify 69% of our sample as addicted to spending time with their friends. The discussion of our satirical research is a critical reflection on the role of measurement and human sociality in social media research. We question the extent to which connecting with others can be considered an ‘addiction’ and discuss issues concerning the validation of new ‘addiction’ measures without relevant medical constructs. Readers should approach our measure with a level of skepticism that should be afforded to current social media addiction measures.

The first in a three part event series from the Social Psychology Section gathering emergency practitioners and researchers in the social psychology field.