Social Media and Z Generation

SELAMAT HARI SOSIAL MEDIA! Berikut adalah salah satu essay (dalam Bahasa Inggris) mengenai Sosial Media yang pernah saya tulis dan telah saya sesuaikan dengan kondisi saat ini, Semoga bermanfaat 😉

Ilustrasi Sosial Media (sumber; solopos.com)

Social Media and Z Generation’s Morality

By : C Williem Deo Lumoindong

Who are alien with social media? Nowadays, there are only a few, aging conservative community who will raise their hands up. Almost all people, especially in the city walk around while keeping their “precious glowing thing” called gadget. Yes, they’re precious, and of course, they’re glowing. And what they open on their gadgets? Mostly, they open some social media based applications.

Our world has changed by the presence of social media. Chat applications quickly replace SMS and phone calls. The main reason is chatting is far cheaper than both conventional ways of telecommunication. But now, what are their impacts for the so-called Z generation?

First, what is Z generation? According to some reliable sources, Z generation refers to peoples born 2000s (some other said mid-late 1990s). This generation has experienced many technological advances, which made their life easier. One of those technological advances is the social media. Like or dislike, the social media have changed our life. First, we will cover about the impacts of social media to our life, and then we will answer this question; “ What is the tie between social media and Z generation’s morality.”

Social media brings both positive and negative impacts to our life. The first positive impact is the social media tends to bring us closer to our far relatives. Imagine how much international phone calls fare that you must pay in case you want to talk to your aunt in America. Or how much time you must spend to wait your cousin in Denmark replies your message about your holiday experiences? Now it becomes much cheaper. You only need to purchase a data plan for a month and start chatting with your ‘international relatives’, or just make a “free call” from some prominent chat applications available out there, in case you want to talk with them.

Then, social media also provides a really wide opportunity to discover our hidden passions. Why? Because social media gives us many chances to discover new things, including the ones we have never know existed. And, if we get hooked to it, social media also provides us opportunities to learn more about it, since there are more and more social media-based online courses out there.

Then, the bad impact is the social media has brought most of our Z generation to the brink of moral decadence. The social media, that was intended to make life easier and increase the Z generation’s life quality, was used to spread some provocative acts. I’ve came across some provocative accounts on social media, and they have their own way to spread that character-breaking acts, including hoax spreading, hate speech and worse, treasonous contents or contents which related to an (or some) act(s) of treason. As the tide of radicalism come closer, both racial and religious-based hate speech are quickly spread. This condition leads to the spread of treasonous contents, including desecrations of National Identity, Symbols, and Officers (such as President, Governors, etc.) which are easily found on social media nowadays. Luckily, Indonesian Police (POLRI) reacted relatively quick and successfully arrested some of those treasonous content makers and uploaders, although I personally believe there are still a lot of them outside.

Nowadays, we can see people share news about crimes via social media. But we must pay more attention when sharing news, especially if the news was sadistic-themed and had a “disturbing picture”. Not only disturbs the reader, those news had a chance to triggers crimes. Some prominent psychiatrist stated that most of today’s criminal “learns” to do their acts by seeing it before, and unconsciously records them. Then, in certain situation, usually involves economic pressure, they did it, unconsciously. Those psychiatrists called this as “recorded crimes”.  

Social media also opens a wide opportunity for cyber crimes. The most common type of cyber crime is scamming. Social media provides those scammers nearly everything they need to set up their scams. For example, social media allows them to create some accounts with (mostly) fake information without being detected, unlimitedly. So, they can easily scam other users, anonymously. Those scams also lead to various low-risk crimes such as fake transactions and fake lotteries, to high-risk real-life crimes such as abductions, sexual abuses, and also assassinations, with abductions as the first-ranker on Indonesia with 7 cases per month in 2010, according to KPAI. 

For the last three cases, survey shows that most of the victims are low or even uneducated women and girls. And the reason is really simple, because those scammers fake their pictures on social media. Most of the victims are quickly attracted by the scammer’s picture posts (usually the handsome one), which are taken from internet for free, easily. Then, those scammers lure them by chatting to meet up with them on a certain location, usually far from their home. Many of them never come back home again.

Not only become victims of the cyber crimes, some members of Z generation also become the suspects of the cyber crimes. Mostly involves “carding”, or using someone’s credit card, obviously without permission to buy something from the online shops, such as eBay.

What is the tie between “carding” and social media? Simple, social media provides the detailed carding tutorials, complete with the list of “usable” credit card details needed for those transactions. Most of carders are teenage gamers, who need money to purchase in-game currencies to support their gaming progresses. The second biggest participants are teens who didn’t have money to buy something that was quite expensive, and the rest are “casual carders” who practice carding just for fun. For example, buy foods to support their party or activities. Or the most unnecessary, they do "carding" just to trap someone with those purchases.

Usually, those carders didn’t think that “carding” is a serious crime. However, “carding” can triggers some bank-related crime. Data stealing and card-faking activities also start from “carding” habits. Further, “carding” can lead to big scale bank-related crime such as ATM frauds and robberies, or even bank robberies.

Luckily, police has uncovered this crime, and take it seriously. In 2003, police successfully caught a group of teenage carders in Bandung. Considering this event was in 2003, long before it was popular, our cyber police have worked brilliantly. Then, a “carding syndicate” consists of 33 Chinese men also caught in their hideout after hacking a large sum of purchases, using a company’s identities. 

As an inseparable part of internet, social media misuse became one of the biggest factors which sparked the positive internet movements. Maybe, most people think that positive internet movements only covers about improper websites issues, but actually, social media are also internet. So, positive internet movements have to cover social media-related problems too. But, we must note that positive internet movements, whom are limited, can’t control an unlimited information flow across social media.

Morale plays an extremely important role in this case. Since there are no barriers and filters that strong enough to prevent bad information’s flow across the social media, the Z generation is still prone to bad influences. The only thing that can (at least) minimize the flow of bad information across the social media is the Z generation’s morale itself. If since the childhood this generation has been taught in a right way, they can filter any information they have got from social media

On the other side, social media was an excellent media to promote something, as social media provides a really wide opportunity to discover anything, anywhere, anytime. There are already numerous evidences about social media’s role to bring a huge success to an event. One of them is the number of international participants in 2014 Indonesian Presidential Election was increased by 83% after KPU decides to promote the election on social media. This significant increase was enough to prove that social media has a great impact for an event’s success.

So, if morale plays an extremely important role to save the Z generation from bad impacts caused by the uncontrolled information gathered from social media, and social media itself is an excellent media to promote something, we have to make use of it. We can start campaigning about using social media wisely, or start to post morale-building things. More friends you have got, more people will read it. And if more and more people read morale-building posts, they will be encouraged to build their morality. If more people have a well-built morale, then more people can filter information gathered from social media, so the number of cyber crimes will be decreased.

Parental guidance also plays an extremely important role in this case. I have conducted a short survey on my own social media account’s feed. The result is teenagers, whose parents guide their usage of social media, or even just befriend them on social media, posts better things than whose parents didn’t involved in their social media activities. Teenagers (who were members of Z generation) without parental guidance often includes bad words in their posts, because they are uncontrolled, and freely posts anything they want.

This simple thing will lead those unguided teenagers to an uncontrolled temperament, and easily provoked traits, that they would like to regret later. The guided teenagers will found themselves a little bit limited at first, so they try to avoid their parent’s anger by using polite words on their posts, but later it will become a good habit of polite posts and comments

Now, we will go back to our main question. What is the tie between social media and Z generation’s morality? The tie is, Z generation’s usage of social media affects Z generation’s morality, and Z generation’s morality affects their usage of social media. If the Z generation uses social mediafor the proper purpose, either use it tocommunicate with their family, make new friends, or utilize it as a media to develop their abilities (even discover their hidden abilities), they will start building their morality, and after their morality was built, they will use social media wisely. If Z generation uses social media for the improper purpose, such as setting up scams, sending brawl invitations or posting provocative things which lead to acts of treason, they will end up with a broken morality, and trapped in a never-ending cycle of social media misuse. And obviously, parental guidance in the Z generation’s “social media life” is a must, to prevent our precious Z generation’s moral decadence, and furthermore, to save our nation’s future.

Additional Sources:

http://hipersomniax.blogspot.com/2014/04/carder-muda-indonesia-akhirnya.html?m=1

http://www.rmol.co/read/2013/08/15/121917/Lewat-Media-Sosial,-KPU-Bisa-Sosialisasi-Pemilih-Di-Luar-Negeri-

http://news.detik.com/berita/2908578/33-wn-tiongkok-yang-diduga-melakukan-carding-dibawa-ke-imigrasi-jaksel

https://www.facebook.com/groups/PTSKindo/

https://reinhardjambi.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/yuk-ngerti-kriminologi-seri-1-kejahatan-itu-ternyata-dipelajari/