Cases of crimes involving Twitter and Facebook – such as posting abusive messages and complaints of stalking – have increased by more than eight-fold in the last four years.

Statistics wise, in 2008, a total of 556 complaints were made to police.

But the whole phenomenon of social networking crime has grown tremendously and last year 4,908 offences were reported.

The figures clearly highlight the fact that 653 people were charged for social networking crime in last year alone.

Police officials are of the opinion that there has been a wide array of offences through the social media platforms, with harassment and menacing messages being the most common.

Civil liberties campaigners said the figures indicate how some police forces had ‘lost all proportion’ in dealing with cases of social media.

In lots of ways, online communities can be self-regulating and exceptional at weeding out unacceptable behaviour. The need of the hour is to find a method of distinguishing between that kind of behaviour and that which needs police intervention.