Further validation of the motivations for electronic interaction scale Jennifer Harmon 1 & Jennifer Boland 1 & Amanda Venta 2 Accepted: 16 December 2020 # The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract Many individuals use social media on a daily basis worldwide. Social media use has both positive and negative effects on mental health, which may be based on an individuals’ reasons for utilizing social media sites. The Motivations for Electronic Interaction Scale (MEIS; Nesi & Prinstein, 2015) was developed to assess attitudes and behaviors regarding the use of social media sites, allowing researchers to examine how motivation for social media site use relates to other important variables. Because there is no existing factor structure for the MEIS in the published literature, the current study seeks to gain an increased understanding of the underlying structure of the MEIS through exploratory factor analysis. Further, it has not been validated with a college student population. In an effort to gain an increased understanding of the construct validity of the MEIS, researchers performed an exploratory factor analysis on the MEIS with a sample of 643 college students. Results yielded a 22-item five-factor model with the following factors: Sexual Health, Feedback Seeking, Social Comparison, Emotion Regulation, and Romantic Communication. The current study’s identification and statistical support for differing subscales of the MEIS suggests it is a valuable tool for further exploration of social media use motivations. Keywords Social media use . Psychometric analysis . Online behavior As technology continues to expand and advance, social media use continues to grow in popularity, particularly for young adults. Indeed, 90% of adults between 18 and 29 years of age report using social media (Pew Research Center, 2015). Given the overwhelming prevalence of social media site use, growing research has devoted attention to the positive and negative effects of such use, often citing the importance of an individual’s motivation for use in its psychological effects (Calero Valdez, et al., 2018; Chu, 2020). Social Media Use Effects Research has demonstrated several positive effects of social media site use. In particular, social media site use has been linked to better relationship quality, social connectedness, and increased social self-esteem (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009; Valkenburg, Peter, & Schouten, 2006). Further, online communication has been directly positively linked to better quality of friendships with online self-disclosure mediating this relation (Valkenburg & Peter, in press). Similarly, internet use was significantly positively associated with improved so- cial connectedness and well-being within adolescent friend- ships (Kraut et al., 2002). Research suggests such benefits may arise due to the fact that online communication reduces visual and auditory cues that may hamper in-person commu- nication among socially anxious individuals (Schouten, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2007). Relatedly, research has indicated certain individuals may psychologically benefit from social media site use when using such sites for coping purposes. Specifically, a study examining 2099 Twitter users found that the site was a platform for individuals to express acceptance and positive adaption to the 2011 European Eschericia coli outbreak in Spain (Gaspar et al., 2014). Another study by Sutton, Palen, and Shklovski (2008) found that social media sites served as sources of information and backchannel com- munication for individuals affected by the 2007 Southern California Wildfires. Social media sites have also been used for peer support purposes when individuals are dealing with severe mental illness (Naslund, Grande, Aschbrenner, & Elwyn, 2014). Critical to the current study, all of these studies cite that social media may have positive effects on mental health when its users are motivated to go online in order to seek social support. * Amanda Venta aventa@uh.edu 1 Department of Psychology, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA 2 College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01300-3