CYBERJAYA – The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has drawn attention to the substantial number of young individuals who spend extended periods online, expressing concerns about harmful aspects of specific social media platforms.
Referring to the MCMC’s Internet Users Survey 2022, the commission’s Consumer and Industry Affairs Division Senior Director Eneng Faridah Iskandar noted that a significant portion of users spending the majority of their day online are youths.
“One of the survey’s findings was that 11.7% of internet users are online for more than 18 hours daily, which is their every waking hour.
“Out of the 11.7% of users, 16% of them are aged 20-years-old and below,” Eneng said when speaking as a panellist at the National Press Club’s (NPC) post-National Journalists’ Day (Hawana 2023) conference at the MCMC Centre of Excellence, here, yesterday.
According to the survey, which was published on October 10, last year’s 11.7% rating for users who are online for more than 18 hours a day is a slight increase from the 11.5% recorded in 2020.
“A look at the average hours of daily internet use in 2022 reveals that 38.5% of internet users engaged with online activities for a minimum of nine hours per day, a slow decrease from the previous year (42%).
“However, when taking into account the margin or error, the trend for 2022 is actually constant to 2020,” the survey added.
Meanwhile, Eneng also disclosed that MCMC had faced a number of issues when dealing with social media platform providers, namely TikTok and Meta, the latter of which is the parent company for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
“There are very real cases of coordinated inauthentic behaviour (on social media sites), which means there are bots out there pushing through certain online messages.
“Another issue is the For You page algorithm, which has serious repercussions (as) young people looking for information on suicide will be fed continuously with such information,” she said, referring to the TikTok page filled with recommended videos the app curates for its users.
Previously, Scoop reported that a bipartisan coalition of 42 United States’ attorney-generals filed a federal suit against Meta, alleging that the provider, among others, designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that hook children and teens to their mental and physical detriment.
Filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the suit seeks injunctive and monetary relief to address what the attorneys general deem as “Meta’s misconduct”. – October 28, 2023