BSMAS Social Media Addiction Test (6 questions)

What you are about to take

The Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) is a 6-question screener developed by Cecilie Andreassen, Joel Billieux, Mark Griffiths, Daria Kuss, Zsolt Demetrovics, Elisa Mazzoni, and Ståle Pallesen — published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors in 2016, generalised from the 2012 Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. Six questions cover the six components researchers use to define behavioural addiction. About 90 seconds. No signup. Your answers stay in your browser — we never see them. Start the test below ↓

✓ Validated by Andreassen, Pallesen et al. (2016, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors) ✓ Cutoffs from Bányai 2017, representative sample of 5,000 adolescents ✓ 90 seconds, 6 questions ✓ Private — answers never leave your device ✓ Free and freely reproducible — no licence fee

How the BSMAS is calculated

Each of the 6 questions is rated on a 1-5 scale: very rarely, rarely, sometimes, often, very often. The total ranges from 6 to 30. Four bands are defined by the score:

The six components the BSMAS items map onto come from Mark Griffiths’ (2005) general framework for behavioural addictions: salience (item 1 — thinking about social media between sessions), tolerance (item 2 — urge to use more and more), mood modification (item 3 — using it to escape problems), relapse (item 4 — trying to cut down without success), withdrawal (item 5 — restlessness when blocked), and conflict (item 6 — negative impact on work or school). The same six components are used for gambling disorder and internet gaming disorder; BSMAS applies them to social media specifically.

What your score means

A score in the 6-12 band is the non-problematic range. The pattern researchers find here is typical of adults who use these platforms without it crowding out the rest of life. A low score is not the same as no use — many people in this band still spend more than an hour a day on social media, but the felt-loss-of-control side that the BSMAS measures is not strongly present.

A score of 13-18 is where most regular users sit. Some thinking about feeds between sessions, occasional reach for the phone when bored or low, mild irritation when access is interrupted — these are common at this band and are not clinical findings. Scores drift upward when sleep is short, work is stressful, or in-person social connection is thin.

A score of 19-23 is the at-risk band Bányai 2017 defined in a representative adolescent cohort. Several of the six addiction-like components are present at a level researchers consider concerning. At-risk use is associated with measurable effects on sleep duration, mood, and concentration — effect sizes are smaller than for clinical depression but consistent across studies (Twenge 2018; Andreassen 2016).

A score of 24-30 is the likely-problematic band. All or nearly all of the six components are present at a level that interferes with the rest of life. Roughly 1-3% of adults in Western surveys score here at any given time, with rates higher among adolescents and young adults. This is not a clinical diagnosis — social media addiction is not in DSM-5 or ICD-11 as a standalone disorder — but the pattern is recognised clinically and is treatable.

When this test is most useful — and when it isn’t

Useful for:

• A 90-second self-check when something feels off about your phone use but you cannot name it
• Tracking change across months after a deliberate structural intervention
• Bringing a quantified number to a doctor’s or therapist’s visit
• Starting a conversation with a partner or family member about your use (a score is easier to discuss than a vague feeling)

Not useful for:

• Diagnosing a clinical disorder — that requires a clinical interview, and the disorder category is itself contested
• Comparing yourself to a friend whose use pattern you do not know in detail
• Capturing platform-specific patterns — the BSMAS is platform-agnostic
• Children under 13 — the validation samples were 13+, mostly adolescents and adults

Social media addiction vs habit — what each means

A common confusion: people use ‘addiction’ and ‘habit’ interchangeably. They are not the same.

Habit is automatic behaviour with low conscious involvement. Reaching for the phone when you sit down to wait, opening Instagram first thing in the morning, scrolling for 30 seconds between tasks — these can be pure habit, harmless, easy to change with one structural cue (phone in another room overnight).

Addiction-like pattern is what the BSMAS measures: a habit plus loss of control, plus impact on the rest of life. The six components — salience, tolerance, mood modification, relapse, withdrawal, conflict — are what distinguish the two. A pure habit might score 8-12; a clear addiction-like pattern usually scores 22+. The middle ranges are mixed.

The ‘addiction’ framing for social media is contested in the research literature. Andreassen 2016 frames the construct as ‘addictive use’ rather than ‘addiction’ specifically because the diagnostic category does not exist in DSM-5 or ICD-11. What the BSMAS measures reliably is problematic use patterns; whether to call them an addiction is a separate question.

Why structural change beats willpower

Social media platforms are designed to maximise the six components the BSMAS measures. The infinite scroll, variable rewards, push notifications, and algorithmic recommendation feeds were engineered to keep users on the platform — Andreassen 2016 frames it explicitly: a high score reflects the design as much as the user.

This reframing matters because the standard response — ‘I’ll try to use it less’ — relies on willpower against an opponent built to defeat willpower. Structural changes work better: phone-free intervals (the first and last 60 minutes of the day are the best-studied), platform-level daily caps via iOS Screen Time or Android Digital Wellbeing, grayscale display, removing the most-used apps from the home screen (the search-bar friction reduces mindless opens 30-40% in self-tracking studies), notification reduction, replacing-not-just-removing (have a competing activity ready before you delete the app).

For parents thinking about their teenagers’ use — the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health frames this as a developmental issue: the same six components the BSMAS measures map onto adolescent brain reward systems that are still maturing. The advisory’s specific recommendations include family-wide phone-free meals and bedrooms, age-appropriate platform limits, and conversation rather than confrontation about use. The 13+ samples in Bányai 2017 show clearly that the at-risk band is over-represented in adolescents and young adults.

Related tests

• PHQ-9 depression screener — problematic social media use and depression frequently co-occur (Andreassen 2016)
• GAD-7 anxiety screener — social-media-related anxiety is a common driver of compulsive checking
• UCLA loneliness scale — passive social media use can paradoxically increase loneliness (Twenge 2018)

Sources verified 2026-05-17

• Andreassen CS, Billieux J, Griffiths MD, Kuss DJ, Demetrovics Z, Mazzoni E, Pallesen S. The relationship between addictive use of social media and video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: a large-scale cross-sectional study. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 2016;30(2):252-262. (PMID 26999354)
• Andreassen CS, Torsheim T, Brunborg GS, Pallesen S. Development of a Facebook Addiction Scale. Psychological Reports 2012;110(2):501-517. (PMID 22662404)
• Bányai F, Zsila Á, Király O, et al. Problematic Social Media Use: Results from a Large-Scale Nationally Representative Adolescent Sample. PLoS ONE 2017;12(1):e0169839. (PMID 28068404)
• Twenge JM, Martin GN, Campbell WK. Decreases in psychological well-being among American adolescents after 2012 and links to screen time during the rise of smartphone technology. Emotion 2018;18(6):765-780. (PMID 29355336)
• Murthy VH. Social Media and Youth Mental Health — The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory. 2023.
• American Psychological Association. Stress in America — Tech Use and Stress. apa.org/news/press/releases/stress.

Privacy

The BSMAS calculation runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers and the calculated band never leave your device. We send one anonymous event to a privacy-respecting analytics service: your locale code and the band string (for example band_at_risk). No raw answers, no per-item data, no identifier of any kind.