O'Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson (800) argue that this is as a result of social networking influencing teenagers and adolescents more negatively and the positive effects that it brings. They state that "daily overuse of social media has negative impact on health, and physical growth of teens and preteens." Recent research also shows that teenagers are fond of expressing negative offline behaviors in the online social networks. These include the formation of cliques, sexual experimentation, peer pressure and bullying. In addition to this, there are other new behaviors that are introduced as a result of their use of social networks such as privacy issues, internet addiction, and "sexting." These teenagers feel comfortable in these social networks and thus are easily drawn to these behaviors and have difficulty in withdrawing when they are needed to. However, there are many advantages of their use of social...

Valentine and Holloway (303)
have argued that online social networking has led many adolescents to become offline introverts but online, they have learnt how to socialize and become extroverts. "Facebook has distracted many adolescents from normal social interactions and made them better at showing virtual feelings than real ones."

Problem identification

Gender distribution

Giles and Price (68)

state that females are more likely to engage in social networking than males. This is because females invest more time into regular updating and maintenance of their social network accounts. However, there is equal access to these social networks by member of both genders. Another study reported by Bonds-Raacke and Raacke