Online Social networking is a type of virtual communication that allows people to connect with each other. This concept arises from basic need of human beings to stay together in groups forming a community. Michael Wesch, cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University, compared the tribal societies to online social networking. Like the tribal culture, in Facebook people project their identity by demonstrating their relationships to each other. You define yourself in terms of who your friends are (Wright, 2007). Wikipedia defines social network service as online platform that focus on building and reflecting social networks or social relations among people who share interests and activities.
Engaging in various forms of social media is a routine activity that research has shown to benefit children and adolescents by enhancing communication, social connection, and even technical skills.1 Social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace offer multiple daily opportunities for connecting with friends, classmates, and people with shared interests. During the last 5 years, the number of preadolescents and adolescents using such sites has increased dramatically. According to a recent poll, Seventy-five percent of teenagers now own cell phones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% use them for texting, and 24% use them for instant messaging. Thus, a large part of this generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and on cell phones.
Social Networking Sites are virtual communities where users can create individual public profiles, interact with real-life friends, and meet other people based on shared interests. SNSs are “web-based services that allow individuals to: construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system”. The focus is placed on established networks, rather than on networking, which implies the construction of new networks. And sharing media content, therefore embracing the main Web 2.0 attributes, against the framework of their respective structural characteristics.
Depression has been repeatedly reported to be associated with Internet addiction for adolescents. However, the validity for the cut-off point of the screening tool, Young’s Internet Addiction Scale, was not provided in these researches. A diagnostic tool for Internet addiction with validity for a cut-off point will clearly reflect what level of Internet use is pathological and correlated with depression.
According to Salehan Mohammad, it was found that although many studies suggest that mobile phone use can lead to addiction, Oulasvirta, Rattenbury, Ma, and Raita (2012) believe that mobile devices are rather habit-forming than addictive. Their findings show that the checking habit, which is reinforced by informational rewards, may increase overall mobile device usage. They conclude that although this habitual use is frequent, it can be better categorized as annoyance rather than addiction. (Computers in Human Behavior 29, (2013), p.2632–2639)