The more common pitfall of on-line friendships and cliques is that they can be somewhat artificial, shallow, and transient. Cyberspace may seem so surreal, so much like a fantasy inside your head, that some people don't take it seriously even though emotions and commitment seem to run high. It's like a great interactive TV program that really gets you emotionally involved, but it's just a TV program. With just a mouse click, you're gone, almost without leaving any traces behind. This sometimes shallow and transient quality of on-line relationships doesn't apply in all cases.
People do find and keep good friends in cyberspace.
But artificial best buddies do appear often enough to be a very problematic disappointment, especially to adolescents who are so sensitized to issues about intimacy, trust, and loyalty. It's certainly isn't shocking news that adolescents are keenly interested in sex. It means, to them, that they're developing an adult identity. Sometimes pictures are exchanged, but that can become an unnecessary technical complication that may ruin the free play of imagination. Whether or not parents consider this a bad thing for adolescents is largely determined by their values.