Recent trends in the research of the uses of social networking sites and their psychological and social effects

Modern technological developments in the mid-nineties of the last century brought about a qualitative leap and a real revolution in the world of communication, and social networking sites are considered the most widespread on the Internet, due to the characteristics and features that distinguish them from electronic sites, which encouraged Internet surfers from all over the world to The increasing demand for them, and these sites multiplied and accounted for a wide audience of recipients.
Social media has made a qualitative leap not only in the field of communication between individuals and groups, but also in the results and effects of this communication, whether on the political, social, cultural or economic levels, whether they are cognitive, psychological, emotional, or behavioral effects.
A report issued by “we are social” Website at the beginning of 2018 revealed that more than half of the world's population is now linked to the Internet, as the number of Internet users in 2018 reached about 4.021 billion, an increase of 7% annually, and that the number of social media users in In the same year, it became 3.196 billion, an increase of 13% annually, and 9 out of 10 of these users access these sites through mobile devices (the latest statistics of the digital world).
These figures and statistics confirm that social media has become an essential component of the social, political, economic, cultural and educational life of individuals and societies, which in turn leads to an expansion of the scope of its effects in various fields and at different levels and patterns of influence.
The social and psychological influences, with their different subtypes and levels, come at the forefront of the effects that the communication sites create, in line with the types of motivations that move individuals to use them, and this is the area that has attracted many researchers at the Arab and international level to study it to determine the quality of these effects and their direction, negative and positive.
In this context, the researcher reviews, recent scientific trends in the research of the uses of social networking sites and their psychological and social effects.