Social networking sites are a daily reminder that we are living in the midst of a technology revolution, a radical transformation of society that is creating an information technology generation.

For people of all ages, social networking sites have become the hottest "place" to hang. You might be at work, at home or at school, but these sites allow you to meet and catch up with old friends, find new people, and, of course, put yourself out there.

For some users, the sites become all-consuming, as they work themselves into a kind of fever or addiction over the virtual world they construct.

But humans are human, and not all are goodness and light. It's not surprising to anyone, perhaps, with some experience of our species, that some people misuse these sites for such negative and potentially harmful pursuits as gossiping, insulting, bullying or committing crimes.

An example of such pursuits is the recent case of four high school students in Tanjungpinang, Riau Islands, who were expelled from school for posting derogatory comments about one of their female teachers via Facebook. The comments were reportedly of a personal nature and offensive to women.

The school's deputy principal, Yose Rizal, said the students' failure to complete and submit homework assignments to the teacher contributed to the decision to dismiss them. Yose said he hoped the decision would send a strong message to other students that such behavior was not acceptable.

Many criticized the move as too harsh. Edi Trisno, the father of one of the students, expressed his shock over the school's decision, and turned the responsibility on the school.

"The school should have educated the children about the uses of Facebook so they would know not to misuse the site," he said.

Perhaps those students should consider themselves lucky the case was handled internally by the school and not taken further, as in the case of Nur Arafah of Depok.

Eighteen-year-old Nur wound up in court on charges of defamation after she posted insulting comments on the Facebook wall of another young woman, Felly Fandini, because she suspected Felly of having an affair with her boyfriend. Felly pressed charges.

The Depok District Court handed down a suspended 75-day sentence to Nur, being lenient because the defendant had proved cooperative throughout the trial.

Two months ago, a group of journalists pressed charges against actress Luna Maya after she wrote on her Twitter account that gossip journalists were worse than prostitutes and murderers.

According to Nina Armando, lecturer in communication studies at University of Indonesia, such cases are due largely to the lack of media literacy among Internet users.

"When they *users* chat via a social networking site like Facebook, it means they talk in a public room," she told Sunday Post. "*If they insult other people through the site* they can be brought to court for defamation particularly since the enactment of the Information and Electronic Transaction Law."

Nina, who is also an activist from the Children Media Development Foundation, expressed concerns about how teenagers are using the sites and what they are learning from them.

"They *teens* are good at operating the technology, but they lack media literacy. They don't know the consequences of posting something that might insult somebody else," she said.

"When it is a conversation between two persons, it's not a big deal. But when it comes to a discussion among many people in a public room, it will become a problem."

It's not all about teens of course - adults too are logging on in droves, and often, to their employers' consternation, during work hours. Many companies have decided to block access to the sites on office computers during office hours in a bid to stop any slide in productivity and performance.

The Surabaya municipal administration, for instance, last year started blocking its civil servants' access to Facebook and Friendster, as well as instant messaging tool Yahoo Messenger.

The policy applies in the municipality down to the subdistrict level, following findings that many civil servants did nothing but browse the sites during office hours.

The widespread use of the sites is also often blamed for slowing down Internet connections. This February, Central Java's Bantul administration also cut government employees' access to Facebook, as access had slowed down the Internet connection, kompas.com reported.

Kompas Gramedia Book Publisher and Multimedia has a different policy for dealing with this situation. Gerald Adi from the human resources department said that not all employees could access Facebook and Twitter in the office.

"It depends on the division. A division that is not directly related to social networking will have no access to the two sites. The marketing and editorial divisions still have access because they need it to do their jobs," said Adi.

"We used to allow access for every division but since people using Facebook made the Internet connection slower, we decided to set this limitation."

But many workers "addicted" to Facebook or Twitter have their ways and means despite any employer ban.

Juju, who works at an advertising company in South Jakarta, has found her own way of getting around office restrictions.

"It was said that the use of Facebook has slowed down the Internet connection," the 27-year-old said. "We can only use social network sites after 6 p.m. or after office hours. For me, that's not a big deal because I still can access it via my smartphone."

She admitted that she was crazy about Facebook when she first join last year. "But now, I'm not as crazy. I usually update my status twice a day. Facebook is a good way to communicate with my friends," Juju said.

"One thing that I never do on Facebook is to say mean things about other people. I'm afraid of getting charged with defamation."

Schools are taking similar moves to dampen Facebook fever. Kompas.com reported that vocational senior high school SMK 1 Gorontalo is also prohibiting students from accessing the sites in a bid to make them stay focused.

But state senior high school SMA 24 has adopted a different approach, and is not forbidding students from using Facebook, said Ida Febrianie, the school's deputy principal and English teacher.

"I myself use Facebook to remind my students about homework or other assignments. It's practical. I try to look at the positive side of it," said Ida, adding that the school's teachers also tried to teach students about not misusing the social networking site.

"We educate them not to meet strangers they have just met on Facebook. The students are still teenagers and sometimes they just can't tell the good from the bad."

Nina pointed out that it has become impossible to completely ban Internet access because the Internet has become part of our lives.

"In some ways, the ban is good because *use of* social networking sites can lead to addiction," she said. "But in other ways, if we want to ban or limit the use of the sites, how can we control it? Because people, including teenagers, can still access the sites through their mobile phones."

So is there an effective way to control people's use of these sites?

"Parents should explain to their children the A-to-Z rules about using social networking sites. A social networking site is a public room where everyone can access personal data, so parents should tell their children not to publish their personal data there," said Nina.

"It is also important not to talk to strangers or insult somebody on the Internet."

So you'd better think before you post, people. You never know who will be reading.

Read more about office-related issues in the WEEKENDER, out on Thursday

Popular

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Analysis: Indonesia denies normalization with Israel to enter OECD

Citroen to produce electric cars in Indonesia