Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar fun. For example, flirting and posting rude comments instead of using it for educational purposes.” Female, 36 years, Kayan Christian, Loikaw (Kayah State urban) When asked if young people use social media to express their own or others’ opinions about the government or other divisive issues (e.g., religion, race), responses were evenly split between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and inconsistent across age and gender. However, urban-based respondents were more likely to have seen examples of these kind of posts from young people (mostly in comments on news stories), while Muslim IDP respondents were least likely. “Mainly on the political and armed conflict related posts. Young people will give comments about discrimination or hate speech in the comments from one ethnicity to another (e.g., Rakhine vs Burmese).” Male, 19 years, Rakhine Buddhist, Sittwe (Rakhine State urban) “Yes, I saw many young people express their opinion against the government. For example, they criticized the government for selling teak [timber that is currently illegal to export]. Female, 27 years, Rakhine Buddhist, Sittwe (Rakhine State urban) “I think those who share news about the government are mostly young people and most of them are politically active.” Male, 34 years, Kayan Christian, Loikaw (Kayah State urban) “I do not think so in this region, because they are scared. They are scared that if they do this, will the government accuse or persecute us.” Male, 24 years, Rohingya Muslim, Basara (Rakhine State IDP) “I don’t post such things and neither do my friends. But I saw some adults post these.” Male, 18 years, Rohingya Muslim, Basara (Rakhine State IDP) Most urban-based respondents thought that young people generally do not consider possible offline consequences of their social media activity. However, there was mention of child protection and monitoring programs that aimed to educate young people about the possible negative impacts of their posting activity. “I don’t think they consider possible offline consequences. Many people post what they want to post. They are not really interested in the issue, but they post to make fun of someone or the situation.” Female, 22 years, Rakhine Buddhist, Sittwe (Rakhine State urban) “We do a lot of child protection programs in the community. We also have monitoring groups. There was a girl who posted a lot of her pictures in social media. She is still very young. So we have ask our monitoring team to go and talk to her, and told her about the negative impacts of posting lots of pictures. After that she posted less pictures. These are some cases that we can monitor.” Female, 35 years, Kayaw Christian (Kayah State urban) In contrast, Muslim IDP adults thought that their young people were now much warier of their social media activity, as there had been examples of online criticisms of the government on Facebook being followed up by police. As a 73