DAMMAM: More than 6,700,000 social media accounts within the Kingdom are said to be promoting various kinds of moral and social deviations, of which 99 percent are believed to be through Twitter, a recent study has revealed.

The study, prepared by social researcher Ibrahim Al-Suhaimi, investigated the role of social media in the formation of devious social groups among young people, and stated that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are most attractive to Saudi youth in this regard.

The study relied on indicators to measure a group's success in promoting deviations, including recurrence, likes, and views for each type of deviation advertised on YouTube, as well as in terms of the number of re-tweets containing references to accounts registered as promoting deviations.

The results showed that the most prevalent kind of 'devious' group on social media are those promoting moral deviation, at 6,384,474 groups, which equals 94.6 percent of the total, followed by 265,664 political deviation groups at four percent.

Groups expressing sympathy for religious deviation came in at third place with 37,086 groups, followed by educational and cultural deviation with 35,256 groups, and finally economic deviations at 4,178 groups.

In his study, Al-Suhaimi divided the types of devious groups present within social media into five categories including religious deviation (such as taboos and Islamic irregularities), moral deviation (such as promoting sex, homosexuality, pornography, and drug abuse), family-based deviation (that which refuses polygamy and procreation), economic deviation (promoting extravagance, illegal trade and contempt in professional work), and finally, political deviation (including terrorist acts, calling for demonstrations, recruiting youths for the benefit of terrorist groups, and the promotion of racism and tribalism).