Mobile Myanmar: The Impact of Social Media on Young People Living in Conflict-Affected Regions of Myanmar Few participants spoke directly about the impact of social media on their thoughts, feelings and attitudes. Those who did said that social media was useful for dealing with stress and difficult emotions (e.g., viewing humorous or inspirational posts, posting poems or song lyrics that describe how they feel), and for exposing them to and helping them to understand other cultures. Impact on society A common theme in relation to social media’s impact on how young people in Myanmar society interacted was the observation that some young people were active and outspoken online, but quiet and reserved offline. This reflects cultural offline norms in Myanmar where feelings are seldom discussed in social conversation, so it seems that social media may give young people an outlet to be more outspoken with their opinions and feelings. Another common theme was that young people who were active online were more educated, knowledgeable, sociable and confident than those who are not online. This likely also reflects data suggesting that rural-based young people (who are generally less educated and have less disposable income that urban-based young people) are less likely to spend time online. Both young people and adults spoke of the addictive nature of social media (especially games for boys) and the impact that this was having on the quality and quantity of offline relationships with family and friends. The perception by some parents that phones were a waste of time and money was a common cause of family conflict. In regard to peer relationships, some said people don’t spend as much time communicating face-to-face anymore, and when they do, they often focus on discussing what they have seen online. There were some examples from urban-based young people of social media being used for advocacy and mobilization around issues such as land confiscation, natural disaster relief, the environment, gender equality, and fund raising for those affected by poverty or disability. Muslim IDP young people said they did not use social media for advocacy, likely due to the stories of past police investigations into controversial posts and regulations against Rohingya assembling in groups. Muslim IDP participants were however aware of social media being used by Rakhine young people to protest against Rohingyas’ right to live in Rakhine State. Young people and adults both believed that social media has great potential to increase empathy and understanding between different groups in Myanmar society and foster peace and tolerance, with some saying that they had already learnt a lot about other cultures via Facebook. While few had heard of digital or media literacy programmes in Myanmar, the vast majority of respondents believed that such programs would be the best way to address the issues raised in this study, by teaching skills such as how to verify news, foster critical thinking, and promote general technology skills. The teaching of English skills was also suggested to open up opportunities for online education. The research in context: Myanmar perspective The finding that Facebook and its sister app Messenger were by far the most commonly used social media platforms in Rakhine State and Kayah State is consistent with previous studies of social media use trends in Myanmar more broadly (Grizelj, 2017; McKay, 2017a; Oo & Thant, 2019). In recent study, Phandeeyar noted the growing popularity of TikTok, compared with Twitter, Instagram, and other internationally popular social media apps (Oo & Thant, 2019). TikTok was common in Rakhine State, where it was more popular than Twitter, but not Instagram, which was still relatively common among Rakhine urban respondents. While the widespread use of group chat-based platforms such as WeChat and Viber in Muslim IDP communities has been identified previously (Thu, 2016), the popularity of IMO, which has similar functionality but a much larger group size limit, is documented for the first time in the current study. The Phandeeyar study found that apps like Instagram were less popular in Myanmar compared with other countries in part because they are dominated by ‘cele’ users (a term used in Myanmar to signify a popular user with online influence; Oo & Thant, 2019). Young people from Myanmar often found cele users annoying, and claimed that their conspicuous displays of wealth, drinking, and western dress made them bad influences. Importantly, they made note of the psychological impact they had on young users, saying that seeing these images could affect the confidence of young people. There were similar comments made by young people in the current study, with some adding that cele users 98