The Youth Social Media Literacy Inventory: Development and Validation Using Item Response Theory

Social media has changed how youth communicate, with whom, and with what consequences. Potential risks include exposure to harmful content, engagement with strangers, or unwanted consequences from irresponsible or naive use. Social media literacy has been proposed as a way to mitigate such risks. This paper aimed to develop a comprehensive Youth Social Media Literacy Inventory (YSMLI) to objectively assess young adolescents’ (9-13 years) knowledge and skills in the context of social media use. The development process included four consecutive steps: 1) an in-depth review of the literature to identify core competencies and domains of social media literacy, 2) creation of a large item pool that assesses these core competencies within six domains (advertising, cyberbullying, privacy, news, phishing, and media balance), 3) expert review and cognitive pretesting with youth, and 4) empirical validation of the final 90-item pool using item response theory based on a sample of n = 306 youth participants. The final item bank is well-fitting, reliable, and valid, offering scales with varying lengths for different purposes including domain-specific assessment and parallel testing.