Ethics in Social Media, How Social Media Tends to Affect Our Behavior

Currently,  the usage of the Internet is considered to be helpful for human life, it provide access for everyone with internet access and connected devices, to receive and send information across the globe within less than a minute. Although the world wide web was first discovered in the mid-'80s, by the help of technological advancement and competitive technology company's growth, this virtual world gradually became more refined and accessible. Resulting in significant demands on the market which is attracted by this virtual world. According to kompas.com, in 2018, approximately there are 143 million internet users in Indonesia from 262 million of its entire population. 

Which means more than half of Indonesia population currently connected to the Internet. Compared to the data released by Indonesia's  Ministry of Technology and Information, by  2011, Indonesia's Internet users are only 18% of its entire population. This condition as we all experience, affected how we tend to communicate with our society, such as; out of curiosity allow us to seek what we want to find, what we should do with the information we had or even how can I sell my product through the Internet. 

The virtue of the Internet relied on the perspective of their users itself since they can exploit the Internet on their will without any limitations. As for example, a boy with a smartphone mostly uses their smartphone to play games, but when it is connected to the Internet, is it only games that he/she could access?, a Company sees the Internet as a valuable tool for cheap and efficient marketing, but who knows what trick they are going to use in order to lure their consumers in the Internet, or a Politicians found the Internet could be helpful to raise its voters by telling them why should they vote him/her, but who knows what he going to tell their voters about his/her Politicians rivals. These conditions are a minor example of what is already happening in Indonesia society, as they are no precautions or preventive measure by the Government itself, causing a shock in Indonesia society. 

While Indonesia can only legislate a law as a repressive measure after the occurrence. We have seen countries, for example, China, Saudi, Arabia among others blocking social media sites, in order to set a limitation on what information their Citizen can get access.

In this article I want to share  awareness for Internet Users by learning from a past occurrence which occurs and gone viral in the social media recently :

The Persecution of 12 years old girl in Pontianak which causes #JusticeforAudrey became global awareness

Last week the news about the persecution of 12 years old girl surges all over the media, including television, newspaper, and moreover, the social media had to raise social empathy towards the victim. Persecution is always wrong in every perspective of humanitarian terms. In the name of humanity, Society send their support through the media towards the victim, cursing of such an act to be dealt on to a 12 years old girl, and these causes Public Figure, such as; Actor/Actresses, Social Media Influencer, Politicians, Ministry, and even the President itself to send their support through the media which can be accessed with the internet. These massive surges of support, caused #JusticeforAudrey to be enacted in the social media platform; Instagram and Twitter. Since Indonesia are known to be the 6th largest internet users in the world, the #JusticeforAudrey easily surges upon society from other countries as well. 

Although the news remains unclear, and there was no clear evidence yet, the #JusticeforAudrey successfully became one of the world trending topics for an entire week.

Indeed persecution is always wrong in every perspective of humanitarian terms, but as our founding fathers state in our Constitutions, according to article number 1 (3) of Indonesia Constitution. Indonesia is a state of law, which means, we Indonesian should uphold the principle of law. As in criminal law doctrine, the presumption of innocence, a person is always considered innocence until the law said they were not, and the person who represents the law itself it is the Judge in a state trial. The lack of understanding of this principle had causes harm to both parties in this case. After the Police announce there was no physical abuse in the victim body, the course of the social media had changed. 

The society who is stumbled upon the news now become cautious about the cases and just start to begin their own research upon the victim through the media. Being dissatisfied that their judgment is not connected to the police statement. As earlier they sent their one-way support towards the victim, currently, Society tends to be separated by two arguments, which one side cursing the victim for spreading false news and the other one remain calm and let the police proceed the case.

How to behave in the social media

I will not tell you to stop using social media or abandon the internet because there were many valuable pieces of information that we could get access for free, and so stopping to use social media itself is not a solution. As I mentioned earlier, the virtue of using internet relied on the perspective of the users itself, since the Government had not set any restriction in using it, and the press did not properly become a filter to give proper verification of news. We are the filter of what we want to believe in this social media era, where various of untamed news surges all over the internet. 

The easiest way to set a barrier in our mind is to give a peripheral thought for every information we receive through the Internet and set a high need for cognition before we could trust the sources. Although it is least possible since we don't have time to give a serious thought from dozens of information we receive every day. Consider ourselves as consumers of a product, mostly we spend our money on a product which we think that we need it, instead we just feel to need it. 

Consumer tends to buy product according to their emotion, a girl who got a broken heart, want to eat chocolate to mend her feelings, a man buy cigarettes because they are stressed out, a boy want to buy a toy because he think it is cool, instead their parents who have the money think it is just a waste with no purpose. 

And so consider ourselves as a consumer of news and set a basic question such, Do I need to believe the information? Is it possible for such a thing to happen? Did the writer provide clear information about the accident ? or Who write this news?. With such the basic measures we force ourselves to give a peripheral thought and proper cognition towards news. The Internet is still a good source of information if we think it is.