Between habit and addiction: an overview of preliminary finding on social networking sites usage among teenagers

Abstract

Social networking sites (SNS) usage have impacted our lives in many ways. Researches on SNS usage mostly were focus on adults compared to teenagers. Nowadays, teenagers are so mesmerize with the SNS applications offered by the provider until they get addicted to it. Yet, SNS addiction is not an isolation process. It started off with high engagement and originated from habit behaviour. This study focuses on exploring and analyzing the usage of SNS among the teenagers in Malaysia specifically in urban area. It also examined the SNS habit and addiction behaviors of the teenagers and emphasized the differences of the behaviors between genders. An online survey form was distributed among the teenagers in urban area. The data were analyzed using SPSS and cross tabulations were constructed to understand the correlation between gender and SNS behaviors. From the analysis, comparisons between genders were done based on the frequency of the SNS habit and addiction behaviors. Based on the preliminary findings, it shows that there are slightly differences between the genders across the behaviors that may have shed some light for other researchers in the niche area.