By Saiful Bahri Kamaruddin
Pix Ikhwan Hashim

BANGI, Dec 16, 2015 – The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) will issue guidelines for parents to deal with children who  face online social media addiction.

However, online addiction among children cannot be blame on the internet per se, said Eneng Faridah Iskandar, Senior Director of Outreach and Engagement division, MCMC.

Eneng Faridah said studies showed that personality factors were the roots of people being addicted to social media.

“Social media is a tool or appliance like any other; and like any other tool can be misused by those who are of high risk in their personalities of becoming addicted to the internet.

“The personality factor is Neurosis, Psychosis  and the use of excessive self-defense mechanism that is not mature.

“It’s not the internet that causes addiction, but there are characteristics that lead to mental disorders that encourages a person to be affected and eventually become addicted to the internet,” explained Eneng Faridah at a Forum titled   Integrity and Ethics of Information Management in Social Media, organised by UKM Profesional of The National University of Malaysia (UKM), here today.

She also advised users of social media to avoid sharing confidential information that could lead to the compromising of national security.

“For civil servants, be careful about sharing confidential information, such as a wife writing about her serviceman husband who is posted to a secret location,” she explained.

Another panelist at the one-day forum Dr. Mohamad Rizal Abd Rahman, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, clarified that the internet in Malaysia technically is not ‘censored’ because under the law the authorities have not tampered with any website or redacted contents of portals before they are accessed by users in Malaysia.

According to the law, a website that is prevented from being accessed, or  ‘blocked’ is not actually censored because the government or internet service providers had not covered up some or all of the contents.

“Imagine that you want to go to a house, and you are shown the way and finally you reach your destination. You see the house, but are prevented from entering it. That might be blocking, but it certainly is  not censorship.

“But if you want to find the whereabouts of the house from a directory, and the address is deleted or covered up with marker ink, than that is censorship,”  he explained.

However, he admitted that there is still a lot of heated debate among Internet users about the practice which they still regard as censorship.

Meanwhile, Assoc Prof Dr Ali Salman, a lecturer of the School of Media and Communications, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FSSK), advised  social media users to be cautious before expressing themselves through postings.

“Before we share the information on social media, decide what you want to ‘share’. I personally cannot ‘share’ everything because it might be embarrassing.

“Now the world is a  ‘knowledge society’. For UKM, if not satisfied with SMEs, do not do that. There are certain channels. Before we ‘share’ something, think carefully.

“So, social media can trigger chaos about religion and race in Malaysia,” he said.

The forum was chaired by Rajan A / L Munusamy, Certified Integrity Officer at UKM.

Also present was the Director of UKM Professional, Assoc Prof Dr Rohayu Abdul Ghani.