Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar CONCLUSION Though it has been clear for a number of years that digital connectedness has played an important role in the lives of young people in Myanmar, research on its impacts has been limited. Myanmar is highly fragmented, both from a geopolitical and sociological point of view, so there are inevitable challenges in understanding social media use and developing initiatives to address its negative aspects. This study thus represents an important addition to a growing conversation, one which seeks to better understand the ways in which online experiences translate to offline lives. Despite recent actions and commitments to improve its response to the inflammatory and dangerous fake news and hate speech that has spread across its platform in recent years, Facebook and other social media companies will fail to address the issues highlighted in this research by applying western understandings of digital behaviour to other user communities. Historical, political, technical, and cultural contexts work in concert to determine the ways in which users navigate digital spaces. International actors must invest and partner in understanding these various factors, if they hope to support young people in Myanmar to develop the digital skills required to create healthier, more pro-social online environments. In particular, Myanmar users differ from their global peers in the way they use Facebook to find and consume information. Where others may use search platforms like Google, differences in Myanmar fonts limit the functionality of these search platforms for Myanmar users. Facebook, however, reconciles Zawgyi (the most popular Myanmar font) with Unicode on the backend, which means searches return more and better results compared to Google. This has a significant impact on the information ecosystem within which young people in Myanmar exist and creates both limitations and opportunities for dealing with pervasive problems such as hate speech and fake news. Whilst Myanmar’s recent experience of social media has been turbulent, and in many ways defined by the prevalence of dangerous online discourse, for young people it also offers hope. Not only is social media used for self-improvement and education – including, for those confined to camps or constrained by conflict – it offers young people opportunities to connect with those who are different from them, which in some cases, changes their perception for the better. In pursuing these opportunities, international and local actors should always be aware of the gender, class, and geographic differences that shape the online experience of young people in Myanmar. For example, rural young people may struggle to make use of online tools requiring large amounts of data, and girls and young women may be fearful of online spaces that expose them, their photos, and their personal information to strangers. Programmers must be careful in the way they construct digital spaces so as to ensure they are safe and welcoming to all potential users lest they deepen an already sizable rural/urban, male/female division in Myanmar’s social media use. Most critically, perhaps, is the importance of recognising links between online use and offline psychological and emotional health. Like many countries in the world, mental health care is limited in scope and quality in Myanmar. However, young people seek out online spaces and forms of expression when they experience psychological or emotional distress. Similarly, young people, particularly those who are already marginalised, report that fake news and hate speech can leave them feeling excluded, hopeless, and even suicidal. Any programming with online components must therefore take mental health and its provision seriously. Given the popularity of health content with young people in Myanmar, and their willingness to share it, the creation and provision of online mental health resources could have considerable reach and impact. Regardless, more research is needed. In addition to working to better understand operational questions, such as why young people in Myanmar seek and accept strangers as friends, studies that explore sociological aspects of social media use are direly needed. In particular, the authors support further research examining (for example): the link between low digital literacy and the spread of fake news and hate speech; the relationships between online and offline harassment of women and girls, particularly from the point of view of young men and boys; and any relationship between the use of Facebook as a search engine and the growing sense within Myanmar that the country is globally misunderstood. With such a young population, Myanmar will almost certainly continue to be significantly affected by social media. As such, it is critical the next generation of social media users receive the necessary support and education as early as possible. 106