The Digital Life Balance Scale: Psychometric Validation and Its Role in Smartphone Addiction, Anxiety, and Life Satisfaction in the Spanish Context

In the digital era, balancing digital and nondigital activities is crucial for psychological well-being, underscoring the need for research to enhance health interventions. This study validates the Spanish version of the Digital Life Balance Scale (DLB-Scale) and explores its associations with smartphone addiction scale (SAS), satisfaction with life (SWL), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in a sample of 334 Spanish university students (M = 21.26, SD = 2.23; 72.5% women). The DLB-Scale demonstrated strong internal consistency (Cronbach′s α = 0.87), satisfactory construct validity, and unidimensionality, as confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.008 after model adjustment). Strict gender invariance was established, enabling valid cross-gender comparisons. Regression analyses revealed that higher DLB levels were associated with lower SAS (r = −0.426) and GAD (r = −0.182) and greater SWL (r = 0.218). Notably, DLB explained 17.9% of the variance in SAS, compared to 4.5% in SWL and 3.0% in GAD. Additionally, network analysis highlighted DLB as a central construct with strong links to SWL and SAS, corroborating its indirect association with GAD. These findings establish the Spanish DLB-Scale as a reliable tool for assessing digital balance in Spanish-speaking populations. The study offers practical implications for interventions aimed at enhancing DLB to improve well-being and reduce digital stressors.