Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar their studies, both as a safety measure and because they thought having a phone would interfere with their education. Parents in Muslim IDP camps were more aware and wary of the dangers of social media than in other areas, and often advised young people not to use images of themselves online or comment on posts related to political or religious conflict. There were a few examples of young people receiving similar online safety tips from ‘educated’ adults (including teachers). The most common online threats to young people identified in the adult KIIs were financial scams and forming online relationships that put them in danger or resulted in them getting married too young (particularly Kayah young people). Being ‘hacked’ was another common online safety concern, with reports of hackers demanding money from victims in order to get their accounts back. The blocking and reporting functions of platforms like Facebook were known by most young people, but only a few knew how to actually use them. Those who had used the blocking and the reporting functions (mostly girls), had investigated how to do so as a result of being hacked or harassed. However, the vast majority of young people did not know how to adjust the privacy settings on their social media accounts in order to help prevent hacking and harassment in the first place. Fake news and propaganda A little over half of young people surveyed reported using social media (particularly Facebook) to read about news and current events. Slightly more than half said that they still get just as much news from traditional media, such as television, radio and newspapers. Rural participants reported getting more of their news from traditional media than urban participants, while Muslim IDP participants reported the heaviest reliance on social media for their news (due to the lack of access to traditional news sources in Rohingya language from their camps). Trust in news on social media was generally low, though many adults (and some young people) thought that young people generally do trust what they read on social media because they don’t have the critical thinking skills required to identify or validate potentially fake news. New Facebook users were thought to be most susceptible to believing fake news. A recurring theme was that trust in news on social media has gone down in recent years due to the increased proliferation of fake news (or perhaps due to the apparent better understanding of fake news that comes more Facebook experience). Muslim IDP participants in Rakhine State reported the highest level of trust in news on social media, despite also being most likely to check the validity of news. This might be explained by their heightened awareness of fake news, and hence greater trust in the news they do read and rely on for information from outside of their camp. The most common ways of checking the validity of news were to ask friends and family, read the comments on the post, or seek out a second news source. Some teachers reported teaching young people how to check the validity of news using Google, which was identified by only 34% of survey respondents as a method they currently used. Google was avoided by many young people who considered it ‘harder to use’ than Facebook, likely due to its inability to properly reconcile Myanmar’s Zawgyi font encoding which is not Unicode compliant). Trust in news was largely dependent on the reputation of the source, with participants from all regions suggesting large international news broadcasters such as VOA (Voice of America) and the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) were the most trusted. Some also said that locally known news agencies were also trusted within their own region. Examples of fake news ranged from inaccurate reports of celebrity deaths to hate speech containing doctored or repurposed images and videos depicting terrorism and racist violence from other countries. Some young people said that adults were mostly responsible for the spread of fake news, as they share it uncritically (both online and offline) due to low media literacy. The most common reaction to fake news was to simply ignore it, while others felt the need to take action by either posting a comment to warn others that it is fake, or mocking it by posting a ‘haha’ emoji in the comments (which also alerts others to the fact that it is fake). Minority groups that saw fake news targeting them often reported feeling angry towards those who spread these stories, questioning why they would do this (more detailed discussion of the psychological impact of fake news and hate speech in section 7 below). Few participants admitted to sharing fake news, but those who did said that they did not realise it was fake at the time. Some urban participants thought that fake news affected young people’s understanding of political and ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, and that it promoted prejudice 95