Upon The Policies, We Can Be the Police for Our Self

By Krisma Nurmaya (English Education 7A)

At this chance I would like to discuss about social media that connect people around the world and that
actually has been much discussed by many experts. But now, I’d like to underline the phrase “connect
around the world” which we sometimes not really think about it and even deeply sink to enjoy it. We
can build communication to maintain relation. We can meet new people, a friend or a collaborator. In
other word, we can make social media as a good place to keep productive and creative.

But in the other side, an actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt on his speech, he ever talked about social media. He
said it is the attention-driven business model, because it uses the powerful feeling of getting attention.
We might ever felt that feeling too, the powerful feeling of getting attention, it is like more followers,
more like, and more popular are more success and better for our life. Whereas researchers proof that
social media potentially can risk our mental health.

Bailey Parnell, the Canada’s Top 100 most powerful women, on her speech she mentioned four
potencies in social media that can risk the mental health. Those are highlight reel, social currency or like
what Joseph said: attention-driven business model, and then the third is F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out),
and the last is online harassment.

And luckily, Indonesian government has a solution for the fourth point, online harassment. There is a
law that has governed it. It is Electronic Information and Transaction law, the law that is made to protect
every citizen from that online harassment and even from cyber crime. This Electronic Information and
Transaction law have been revised at 2016 and have ensnared many people. And since that, recently
people debating this law because it is not protect instead of attack the citizen. Even some people
assume that the law restricts our right to give opinion or freedom to speak up.

Before we consider the law protect or attack, let see several points that we must know and understand
before posting, commenting, or sharing your opinion in social media. Let’s postpone talking about the
human right, because first we have to talk about the obligation as social beings called human. In real
social life, there is an important point we called social responsibility. It is like the ethics, include norm,
value and morality. The basic thing that may be a concern, because this basic thing is forgotten to be
brought on social media activities. We speak or act in social media like the person we comment or
criticize is not in front of us, so we don’t consider about the ethic. We don’t remember that not only our
self who has the human right.

So that is, since the social responsibility is not really works enough, we have law responsibility which is
getting complex and maybe intricate. The scope also become more and more complicated, such as hoax,
defamation, hate speech, you name it. As in Indonesia it self, we have many cases and many people are
ensnared by the law. Why, because social media leaves digital evidences. It is not like a couple words we
say and then disappeared into the air. That’s why we have to fully know and thoroughly understand the
digital literacies. In digital literacies there are texting literacy, filter literacy, search literacy, network
literacy, and many others that you can learn more on the books.

The point is when we came to the conclusion. There are social responsibility and law responsibility that
we have to consider before we offend others, before we share our opinion. Although perhaps, it will be
different case, when we want to spread the truth and we have done with those two things, but we are
still ensnared. I also will stand on the same page, that there must a voice that voices, so that the voice of
truth is not silenced. At the end I’d like to say, “Upon these policies, we can be the police for our self.”