Essay outline

Main problem: social media use by youth in Malaysia to share negatively-oriented information

Affected group: youth  of Malaysia who  come into contact with these negatively-oriented information, they are affected mentally, thinking and philosophy of them are affected.

Agent to change: Government of Malaysia

Solution 1: Malaysia Government shut down websites which are flooded by negatively-oriented information (ex. Rumors, scandals, nude photo cases…)

Evaluation 1: ineffective, as social media sites (ex. Facebook, twitter, instagram…) not likely to be sensored, or else a big rebound from public. Therefore, government can only sensor the pages or groups involved, but there will still be new ones upcoming.

Solution 2: educate from the root 1 : schools ( primary school, secondary school and high school) . educate on what to share and what not to share, how to make use of social media wisely, ex. Sharing academic links

Evaluation 2: these schools should be targeted as the youth that frequently use social media are ranged from 10-20 years old.

Solution 3: tit for tat: posts on social media

Evaluation 3: about how negatively-oriented information will  affect our mind and mental growth, and how a make-up of a future adult will be affected

 (Blumler & Katz, 1974). Findings showed that youth always (five to seven days per week) use social media to share information including personal information. Results also showed that youth used the social media more for sharing negatively-oriented information compared to the positively-oriented information. strong relationship between frequency of use and the negatively-oriented information-sharing activities.

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.

Noorriati Din, Saadiah Yahya, and Raja Suzana Raja Kassim (2012) agreed that a social media site also increases the quality of youth life since it serves variety of information and knowledge for the youth.

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.

Othman (2011) shows that youth is the heaviest user of the Internet and this is due to the existing social media sites.

83% from all Facebook users in Malaysia are the youth (Hui, 2010)

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)

a study in Malaysia shows that female youth in Malaysia share online shopping inclination through social media sites whereby they share information on products advertised online and later  buy it through online as well (Khalil & Ameen, 2012). In contrast, it is reported that male youth sustainably engaged with social media sites due to availability to play games online and to discuss on football and computer software (Ali et al., 2010)

A study conducted by Rozita, Nazri, and Ahmad (2010) shows that ethnic polarization between Malay and non-Malay students is widening due to social media sites because the students only choose to connect to someone they really want and they must surely be among their own race. Rozita et al. (2010), social media sites are used by the different races in Malaysia for different purpose and in a different way. Culture of each race influences the way of the social media sites is used. Besides culture, the different ethnicities also use their own mother-tongue while communicating with their friends in the social media sites.

Popular positive-oriented activities which are noticed among youth are to share notes on religious values, to share academic-related news while the negative-related activities are to share links related to entertainment and to share latest photos.

Results showed that for the positive-oriented information-sharing activities, the only factor of the social media use is the number of education information posted (r = 0.188, p = 0.000). Even though the relationship is very small, but it is significant enough to show that education-related information can predict the possibility of youth to be engaged in the positive-oriented information-sharing activities

moderate positive relationship between negative-oriented information-sharing activities with the number of general information posted on the wall, encompassing the sharing of photos, activities, feelings, videos and music, and links. The relationships between the negative-oriented information-sharing activities are weakly with the number of favorites and personal profile posted on the wall. The relationships between the negative-oriented information-sharing and the number of sites subscribed to, communication contact posted, and education information posted are very weak, yet significant.