Youth, social media and violence amidst pandemic

By Medha de Alwis

To get insights into youth, social media and violence amidst the pandemic, the British Council Sri Lanka and the Sarvodaya Institute have conducted an online research in the first three months of this year, with a sample of 1,680 youth in the age group ranging from 18-29 years from all districts of Sri Lanka.

The initiative was following recognition that the integration of social media with the present-day youth, and in many instances the interaction of the two leads to psychological and physical violence.

Prof. Prasana Perera led the research with senior researchers Dr. Malani Balamayuran and Tania Alahendra focusing on the involvement of the Sri Lankan youth in social media, dominant forms of social media violence and abuse, root causes for online violence, real life experience of social media violence, impact of social media on the life of Sri Lankan youth, impact of COVID-19 on the said issues and awareness of reparative measures to combat social media violence among the many subjects.

The purpose of the survey is that the findings of the same would lead in the pathway of designing and implementation of effective measures to minimise, if not eradicate violence in social media.

A panel discussion was held with the researchers of the study and moderated by Sarvodaya Movement President Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne. During the panel discussion, ICTA Chief Digital Economy Officer Anura de Alwis spoke about social media consumption patterns among Sri Lankan youth. De Alwis elaborated on the manner the youth of present day are adversely addicted to social media. Speaking of prevalent forms of social media violence and abuse, Roar Global Editor in Chief-Media Roel Raymond revealed her personal traumatic experience of social media violence expressing concern how disastrous such experience could be to the youth.

Digital Media Analyst Nalaka Gunawardane and Hashtag Generation Head of Programs Nethmini Medawala elaborated on the experience of social media violence and the role of Sri Lankan youth in prevention of social media violence, respectively.

The report on the study is available at https://www.britishcouncil.lk/programmes/society/youth-social-media-and-violence-research-report.