The addiction to social networking sites among Malaysian youths has created social ills among the

youths.

Facebok has 1470 million active user worldwide. Twitter has 316million active users and Instagram
has 300million active users. The data shows that social networking sites are immensely popular as
people use them for personal and prfossional purposes. Thus, many young people spend too much
using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other forms of social media that interfere with their other
aspects of daily life. Social addiction is defined as spending too much time on certain activities that
lead to a habit that interferes with other important activities such as work and school. The addiction
to social networking sites has created social ills among Malaysian youths such as having poor
academic performance, wasting time on non-beneficial online activites and commiting cybercrimes.

The first effect of the addiction to social network sites lead many Malaysian youths to have a poor
academic performance. Students have poor concentration in class due to lack of sleep as they spend
their sleep time chatting with their Facebook friends. As a result, these students are sleepy and fail
to pay attention in class. They might not able to concentrate. Some students are constantly
connected to their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts with their handphones. The students
might refuse to participate in class activities. Sometimes, the victims have poor attendance as they
are not interested in going to class. They prefer to spend time on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
and communicating with their friends and playing games without paying attention to their studies.
This behaviour will soon lead to an increase in dropout cases.

Another effect of the addiction to social network sites among Malaysian youths is wasting time on
non-beneficial activities. For instance, many Malaysian youths like to get the latest updates on
famous people such actors, actresses, politicians and socialites. Nowadays these people share their
lives with the public by using Facebook Fan Page, Twitter and Instagram. These public figures show
their exciting lives with their fans. Furthermore, the youths spend time chatting and gossiping with
their friends and their idols using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They can play video games with
their facebook friends. With the advent of mobile phones and mobile data, they would find it hard to
stop theses addictive activities.

The last effect of the addiction to social network sites is commiting online crimes. There are many
cases of cyberbullying