Prospects and Challenges for Social Media in
Pakistan
Shahzad Memon Sorath Mahar
Associate Professor and PhD scholar
Member IEEE Institute of Information
Institute of Information and and Communication
Communication Technology Technology
University of Sindh University of Sindh
Jamshoro, Pakistan Jamshoro, Pakistan
Shahzad.memon@usindh.edu.p sorathmahar@yahoo.co.uk
k
Abstract—Advanced and rapid developments in the field of
computer and wireless technologies makes easy and possible to be
a direct part of electronic media. Social media is an attractive,
informative, useful, and approachable way to get information. In
last few years, there is an increase observed in the smartphone,
smart tablet, and wireless broadband market in Pakistan. It is
because of the popularity of social media, its access, and usage in
most of citizens. It is a positive prospect for the country,
however; there are many issues are rising with the usage of social
networking sites. In this paper, the social media technologies
were and reasons behind the increase in usage of social media
Pakistani netizens (Internet users) is discussed. Moreover, the
challenges regarding social media such as cyber-crimes, cyber
blackmailing, ethics, security and identity protection in Pakistan
is discussed in this Paper.
Keywords: Pakistan; social media; society; security; netizens;
challenges
I. INTRODUCTION
Electronics media is used as an important source of
information in our daily life and it is using to share
information rapidly with masses. Technological developments
and use of ICT in electronic media makes it more attractive,
useful and approachable to everyone. The internet rapidly
changed the public communication because of its speed, ease
of access and availability. Also, it has set its trend in different
fields and environments; like politics, education, marketing,
business, entertainment, news, and information.
From those types of media, the social media is one of the
contemporary medium where people create and share contents
in impressive style. Facebook, MySpace, Digg and Twitter are
some examples wherein various types of media have been used
to influence people widely. The users of internet spend more
time with social networking sites than any other sites. The total
time spent on social networking sites in USA increased by 99
percent to 121 billion [2].Social media has gone beyond just
sharing, it also bring financial income and career opportunities
[3]. Social media accounts became an obligation these days
because of its reach and availability. Facebook is one of the
examples of social media which is a powerful and influential
social medium of this century. In the beginning, the people
Lachman Das Dhomeja Farman Pirzado
Professor MPhil scholar
Institute of Information and Institute of Information and
Communication Communication Technology
Technology, University of Sindh
University of Sindh Jamshoro, Pakistan
Jamshoro, Pakistan Farmanpirzada@gmail.com
lachhman@usindh.edu.pk
used it to share valuable information for educational and
entertainment purposes. In addition, it became a successful
propaganda source and has been used as a negative aspect by
most of the people. The people use social media for spreading
baseless and biased news, fabricated caricatures and pictures in
offensive terms for their opponents. Nowadays, numbers of
users are increasing with the passage of time and most of the
people have more than one account with different names. Main
purpose behind multiple accounts is to use them for as personal
and private sharing, however; multiple accounts can be used
for negative purposes such as blackmailing the other people on
the name of emotions, propaganda of their ideology and
thoughts without mentioning actual ID.
There are various shortcomings of policies and privacy in
social networking sites such as; there is no restriction on
uploading photos, information and using indecent words
against religion, culture, cast and creeds of others or some
known personalities; mainly celebrities and politicians. People
are humiliating religious and political leaders by uploading
their caricatures, stories and comments which is the worst
aspect of social media. Nowadays political parties and their
workers are also active on Facebook so it is well understood
that they are using the social media as propaganda tool against
other parties.
Most of the users of Facebook are literate and mature enough
to act as opinion makers but due to such propagandas they also
get involve in negative remarks, activities and also mistreat this
platform, which causes disturbance and conflict in the society.
The top most issue is making fake accounts of well known
celebrities, Government officials, politicians, even judges and
in some cases heads of well known organizations to propagate
their opinion or to make fool the other peoples. This type of
activities is against the prospects of this facility and created
new challenges to the governments and states. Other side
theses segments are leading to forgery and miscommunication
until the victims clarifies their position because there have been
some cases of uploading objectionable stuff on their behalf.
Interacting respectfully with people and maintaining personal
privacy are prerequisites for effective information-sharing and
communication but it is known that a large number of people
are indulged with fake missions through social media. Fig. 1.

PAKISTANI NETIZENS
547,980 Dedicated to console gaming

depicts the percentage of social media penetration. It shows 458,200 Big on Cooking

that, the Pakistan has 4% penetration whereas; Laos, 601,960 Have interest in Dance

Bangladesh and Myanmar have lower percentage of people 1,954,080 Like Literature or reading

using social media. 1,874,220 Own Old Computers

99,220 Newly wed in the last year

198,080 Number of declared parents

1,424,280 Smart phone/tablet users

2,179,280 Like Fashion

1,930,500 Relationship status single

Social Media Users in %

Fig. 3. Random Fun facts based on what people have included in their
56 53 52 50
personal timelines (Source: The Express Tribune)
% % 45 45
% % 41
% % 39 36
% %
B. Government usage of social media
% 29 28 27
% % 23
% 19 18
% 13 12
% %
% % 7% 7% 5% 5% 4% 4%

Social media sites are stylizing journalism these days not just
2% NA
China
Hong Kong

Philippines
Taiwan

Malaysia

South Korea

Maldives

Thailand
Singapore
Brunei

Indonesia
Macao

Japan

Mangolia
Asia

Cambodia

Bangladesh
Vietnam

Sri Lanka

Nepal

Myanmar
Bhutan

India

Laos
Pakistan
in terms of individuals but also for traditional media, as they
are becoming major source of news and information in
Fig. 1. Social Media penetration rate 2013 of Pakistan as compared with Pakistan [10]. According to Fig. 4. Infographic, Facebook is
other countries (Source : www. wearesocial.net) more likely used while talking about social networking sites.
Other networks include the most popular sites among
II. SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND PLATFORMS Pakistani netizens. Previously only traditional media was the
Social media technologies are modern and customized form of only platform for advertising campaigns, however; due to
internet. With their arrival and growth new forms of increase in the use of social networking sites in Pakistan,
interaction and communication have been made possible. public relation department has started using it for advertising
and marketing.

Facebook Users
Other 17.90%
Yahoo. com
18.00%
61%

Live. com
53%

49%

Msn. com
35%

34%

29%

26%

Other networks
22%

27.66%
Online Education
Email

Streamed Music
Social Networking

TV shows/ movies

General News
General Search

Online Banking

22. 70%
Streamed

Blogspots 16.60%
Fig.2. Usage of Social Media Platforms Wikipedia. org 14. 90%
Microsoft. com 14.80%
The prospects of its usage have made social media Hamari web 13%
Jang.com. pk 11%
technologies attractive to commercial interests. Fig. 2. Shows Geo. tv 8. 40 %
Metacafe. com 8. 40%
the social media usage in different areas including marketing,
socialized usage, education, entertainment, news and
information. Furthermore these areas are subdivided in terms
of their usage. Beside entertainment and socialization, social Fig. 4. Social Media usage in Pakistan [Source: www.Propakistani.pk]
media has been improved in other sectors too. Recently, government has also started to use social media to
A. Why people use social media in Pakistan? share information about development projects, policies and
strategies. It has been made possible due to unceasing
People in developing nations, including Pakistan, are quickly availability of citizens on social media especially Facebook,
catching up on their adoption of technology, especially mobile
which has contributed in social activism in Pakistan.
and social media use. Although internet penetration of
Unfortunately, it has both positive and negative effects on
Pakistani citizens is still swaying between 10 to 15 percent,
with less than 2 percent are connected with broadband high- society at the same time. Many social changes have been
speed internet [3]. Figure 3, summarizes some random facts reported by traditional media regarding these issues. One of
and figures obtained by surveying of profiles about the the main contributions of social media is political awareness
activities and interest of people in social media. among citizens of Pakistan. Public is more vibrantly taking
part in political issues and started playing important role with
the help of social media.
Moreover, social media is used as a tool for acquiring the
target audience, which could be beneficial for all social media
areas. Alternatively, social media is also becoming part of
educational institutes where major courses related to media are
already part of various universities of Pakistan [11]. With the
rise in social media trend in Pakistan educational institutes are
thinking to include social media as academic subject.
III. SOCIAL MEDIA IN PAKISTAN
Social media is trend nowadays; every person is connected
with the world through this medium. It has penetrated deep
into our society through several channels. The most advanced
form of communication is available today is internet. Today
there are over 3 billion Internet users in the world (World
Internet Users and 2014 Population Stats) [12]. That means,
over 42 per cent of the world’s population has access to the
Internet [10]. There are 5.9 billion Google searches every day
(Google Annual Search Statistics). Over 409 million people
read word press blogs (A live look at activity across
WordPress.com), and more than a billion unique users watch 6
billion hours of video everyday on YouTube (YouTube Press
Room).
The World Bank estimates Internet penetration in Pakistan
crossed 10.9 per cent in 2013 [4, 12]. The web 2.0 tools like
Facebook twitter and YouTube has brought considerable
changes and great opportunities for the people of Pakistan.
With the rise of it, internet users communicate with each other
and participate in social media activities. Regardless of
financial challenges Pakistanis are still connecting with
different devices and contents related to social media [10].
Figure 5, illustrate a hierarchy of social media applications in
Pakistan.
are no indications that its rate of growth has been anything
comparable to the explosion of the Internet.
In other words, Internet today reaches a larger number than
print publications in Pakistan. This is because millions, who
simply do not read but watch videos, chat with friends, share
pictures, listens to songs, also use the Internet and surf the net
for fun and entertainment.
A. Users
Internet in Pakistan is available since 1990. There are 31
million internet users in Pakistan according to 2013, from
which 15 million browse the web with their mobiles, 80
percent of internet users spend more than an hour online
everyday but the average session is only 05 minutes.
Pakistan is having over three million bloggers. There are over
four million users of Facebook, one of the popular social sites
among citizens. The mobile penetration rate in the country is
60.4 percent respectively. These statistics about internet usage
and social media integrated with modern technology can shape
the future of Pakistan [6].
B. Facebook in Pakistan
The statistics of penetration of Facebook in the
population and percentage of active participants in online
community is presented in figure Fig. 6.

of
on
s ati
en tr
tiz ne
ne Pe
k
oo
eb
c
Fa
Campaigns/
Advertising

MARKETING
Products/
Brands
Monthly active
Event
Planning/
Other
Facebook users
in Pakistan:
services
Weblogs/
Social blogs/

SOCIALIZED
Microblogging

Social
8,648,000
Bookmarking/
Tagging (grew by more than
1,162,040 in the last 6 months)
tio f
la o

Social
n

networking
pu ion

sites/ forums/
Lifestyle 29.69%
po rat

Livecast/
Streaming
ry et

USAGE
nt en

OF NEWS
ou P

SOCIAL INFORMATION
lc k
al oo

MEDIA
Position in the global list
er eb

Publishing
of countries
ov ac
F

Academic/
E-learning visiting Facebook: 27
Healthcare 4.69%
EDUCATION

Gaming/
WIKIS
Video

ENTERTAINMENT
Visual Arts/

Fig. 6. Facebook penetration in Pakistan [ 4,10,12 ]

Fun

Fig. 5. Hierarchy of Social Media applications in Pakistan Users

Internet penetration of the country is nearby 16 percent, while

broadband subscribers have been more than doubled in last 40 and over
two years. Pakistan is on the fifth rank being largest mobile 30-40
phone market in Asia.
The Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan 25-30
(ISPAK) estimates 25 million Pakistani users in October 2014 18-24
[2,12]. Of these there are 11.6 million Pakistanis on Facebook
13-17
(Annual Social Media Marketing Report 2014). These 25
million users are from an adult population of 116 million Millions 0 2 4 6
(about 35.5 per cent of the total population of 180 million is Users
under the age of 14). [11-12] That is 21 per cent of the adult Fig. 7. Facebook users in Pakistan according to their age
population. Granted this is the top 21 per cent of the
population. But by contrast, according to UNESCO estimates,
Pakistan’s newspaper penetration in 2004 was at 50.3 per Majority of Pakistani Facebook users are young, as the figure
1,000 population; that is, 5 per cent of the population (Daily 5 shows the age range across 18-24 is the highest which
newspapers) total average circulation per 1,000 inhabitants exceeds 4 million as compared to others. Fig 7, illustrates the
[11]. It may even have risen substantially since then, but there statistics of users in terms of gender. There are 70% female
and 30% are male users of Facebook social site in Pakistan
(See figure 8.).
70%
30%
Fig. 8. Male and female Facebook users in Pakistan
IV. CHALLENGES WITH SOCIAL MEDIA IN PAKISTAN
Today everything is about social media. While using it, one
should be wise enough to avoid destructive methods. Pakistan
is also facing numerous social media issues like other
countries, which are both related to ethics and security as
shown in Fig. 9.
A. Awareness and Trainings on the Usage of Social media
Technology alone could not be the best defense against
violence. There must be some law and security to better cop
with that. Security awareness trainings could be first aid
solution for this problem. But unfortunately, awareness
trainings are often analyzed as extravagance not as a requisite.
Security awareness trainings should be viewed as compulsory
element for the protection of user information from being
compromised. Such type of trainings should be designed and
encourage the user about the appropriate usage, individual
user responsibilities, protection and security of information to
protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of
information resources and systems from being misused.
Challenges
With
Social Media
SECURITY
SECURITY
ISSUES
AWARENESS
TRAININGS
Black
Mailing
Fake IDs/ Identity
Profiles protection
Fig. 9. Social Media challenges in Pakistan
B. Ethical Issues
Cyber crime is becoming as issue these days in the country.
Reported misuse of the technology ranges from websites being
hacked for the purpose of forgery and financial fraud. From all
the registered offenses through internet, cyberstalking is on the
top of the list. More than 80 percent of complaints registered
with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) [7].
Most of the victims are young women facing harassment,
blackmailing and extortion. In most of the cases, this harms to
not only the victim alone but also their families. These
incidents are related to social networking sites, mostly
Facebook and sometimes twitter. The FIA also came across
the cases where morphed and genuine images, the contact
details including phone numbers of individuals were uploaded
on OLX. com; a popular online marketing website [7].
C. Security Issues
False identification or fake IDs have been probably around
as long as the social media started. With the help of photo
editing software and highly quality printing, creating a fake ID
is very easy nowadays. It is a crime that different countries
have been punishing people with fake IDs, they have fake ID
laws but it differs from state to state that how the crime is
categorized [8]. Unfortunately, Pakistan is one of the few
countries where cyber laws are still in the pipeline waiting for
implementation.
D. Identity Protection
As trend of fake accounts on social media has increased
too much in Pakistan due to which lots of victims of this crime
are facing great problems and issues. Similarly, the greatest
victims of this cyber-crime are our Pakistani celebrities who
have almost targeted by their fake accounts. Fake ids and
pages has become a destructing way these days due to which
our Pakistan celebrities seem to be unhappy. Some people are
used to spread fake news via fake pages/profiles of these
celebrities due to which celebrities have to face fake news
regarding them. Even every celebrity has fake profiles and
pages at Facebook these days through which rumors about
these celebrities crossed many eyes. Lots of celebrities have
seen to be very exhausted and angry over their fake Ids and
pages through which rumors and fake messages are appearing
regarding them. Through cyber-crimes many other crimes are
also taking place due to which common people are also getting
in trouble too.
ETHICS Pakistani celebrities are demanding to FIA and government to
take action against these cyber-crimes which are becoming a
cause of trouble in their life as fake IDs and fake pages of
ISSUES celebrities are misleading people and also harm their images
too. Government should take action against cyber-crime in
order to get rid people from this misleading trend [9].
Harassment
Government
Government of Pakistan is facing tremendous challenges
Frogery&
Cyberstalking Financial
Fraud
in developing public interest by social media. Government
needs to do research and the finding may help them to develop
some creative and innovative solutions to access the resources
outside of its control. Effectively usage, and participation via
social media with individuals, organizations and institutions,
offers great promise in finding and mobilizing these resources.
Social media must be important for government of Pakistan in
terms of trust or social capital as it is essential for the national
law and order of the country. Moreover, social media could be
useful for government to increase trust of citizens by direct
interaction.
V. CONCLUSION
Pakistan is a developing nation where different media
platforms are emerging with internet. The increasing number
of social media usage in Pakistan is a prospect side of social
media wherein the same has created a high level of
insecurities in the mind of peoples that may be someone is
using fake ID on the window of social media. Social media is
observed as one of the powerful platform which could bring a
positive revolution in Pakistani society. It can help
government to interact with citizens and allow them to discuss
on their problems and needs. The political instabilities in the
country have created few challenges which are needed to be
addressed in the interest of safe usage of the social media
websites. In future, the government needs to think about
unnoticed facts and issues which can help to create a better
and secure socialization with the public. Furthermore, social
media owners and experts may initiate social media trainings
of the users or some essential identity requirements for users
must be designed to overcome the security, privacy and other
issues related to the peace of mind of the people.
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