Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar Summary of key findings General usage  More than half of young people sampled in this study were heavy smartphone users, typically self-reporting between 1 and 5 hours use a day (about half of which was spent using social media).  A common theme among both young people and adults was that young people use their phones whenever they are not working or studying, distracting them from other more active tasks and keeping them up late at night.  Facebook was identified by the majority of participants as the most popular social media platform among young people.  Posting and sharing news and information was the most common reason for using social media. Almost half of all respondents said that they share health tips online. Online safety  The vast majority of both adults and young people believed that young people are not safe online, given the prevalence of online threats such as scams, hacking and harassment.  Parents do not teach their children how to use social media safely because they typically do not use social media themselves and therefore do not fully understand the online dangers.  Instead, parents mostly try to limit the amount of time their children (especially daughters) spend online as a safety measure.  Few young people know how to adjust the privacy settings on their social media accounts in order to help prevent hacking and harassment. Many young people are aware of blocking and reporting functions, but few actually use them. 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 of the survey respondents said that they still get just as much news from traditional media, such as television, radio and newspapers.  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.  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.  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.  Young people say adults are 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). 7