Essay Draft#1

(Blumler & Katz, 1974). Findings showed that youth always (five to seven days per week) use social media to share information including personal information.  Muhammad Muhsin Ahmad Zahari (2012, as cited in Rosmah Dain, 2012) claimed that youth in Malaysia use the social media sites to share their problems and most of them are inclined towards negative things.

Othman (2011) shows that youth is the heaviest user of the Internet and this is due to the existing social media sites. This is further supported by (Hui, 2010) that 83% from all Facebook users in Malaysia are the youth. Studies in Malaysia show that Malaysian youth primarily share thoughts and feelings through social media sites. Moreover, youth use social media site because it also represents freedom (Ali et al., 2010; Latiffah et al., 2009; Levi & Samsudin, 2010).

Youth consist of 40% of the overall Malaysian population (Economic Planning Unit, 2010). Thus, it shows that youth is the most significant age group in Malaysia. Youth is the future of a country. When youth of Malaysia come into contact with these negatively-oriented information, they might be affected mentally and the healthy-mind makeup of them might be influenced by the negative information.

Government of Malaysia has been taking actions against these online negatively-oriented information (ex. Rumors, scandals, nude photo cases…), especially on social medias, by sensoring the sites that are flooded with negatively-oriented information or spreading groups and taking charge of people who spread these. However, this did not seem to be effective as the social media that are commonly and frequently used to spread the negatively-oriented information are the sites that taking a great part of people lives, for example, Facebook and Twitter. Sensoring these sites becomes impossible as it will induce a great rebound from the public. The only solution the government can resort to is shutting down spreading groups and catching people who initiated it, but there are always new upcoming groups and people which turns the government’s solution into useless and just wasting its effort.

Ministry of Education Malaysia can contribute its role in solving this phenomena. As the ones that share and the ones that are affected are the youth, it is obviously that youth is our only and main target in this case. Educating from the root, prophylaxis before anything happens will be the more appropriate and effective way. Context about teaching what are the suitable and appropriate things should be shared to the public, how should they make use of social media wisely (ex. Sharing academic links) and how should they view and filter the information available online before they absorb should be added into the textbook or tutorials in school. Campaigns concerning these should be held to raise awareness among youth too.

Tit-for-tat, as the negatively-oriented information mainly floods the social media, so the most effective way to encounter it is to post information about how negatively-oriented information will affect our mind and mental growth, and how a make-up of a future adult will be affected on social media too. Youth might ignore or distracted, or not paying attention when these information being given in school lessons or tutorials or campaigns, but they will never give up on social media. Youth tend to pay  more attention to things posted on social media therefore posting the information on social media will be a better trick to convey the messages to the youths.

In conclusion, youth are the future make-up of a country and anything that might affect youth negatively should never be neglected as they that might cause damage to a country’s future construct. Authorities should examine the solutions being currently used and come out with the most effective solutions, there should not be any marking time. “The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.--J.P. Morgan”

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