Bruneian Youths on Social Media: Key Trends and Challenges

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, Brunei Darussalam has been experiencing a huge increase in Internet penetration and social media usage. As of January 2023, these stand at 98.1 per cent and 94.4 per cent, respectively. Instagram remains the platform with the potential to reach citizens by advertisements (60 per cent), followed by Facebook (57.6 per cent) and Twitter (21.9 per cent) (Kemp 2023). While indicating society's high reliance on social media platforms for daily interactions and engagements, these statistics also point to these platforms being alternative sites for social engagements. With the proliferation of affordable mobile technology, mobile and fixed broadband availability, and high digital literacy, social media such as Instagram, Twitter and TikTok have become sites where young people share their everyday life experiences and their socio-cultural and religious practices, and create new discourses that effectively shape the nation's socio-cultural, religious and political landscapes.

Certain digital trends can already be identified. In the past, Bruneian youths’ digital social transactions were in the form of knowledge exchanges and social interactions that were enabled by social media platforms’ key features and affordance, by the rise of individualism and self-expression, and by the transnational flow of popular culture produced and consumed. They included entertainment, daily life, satires and memes, to name a few.

Today, social media's user-generated functions allow users to co-create and share content. Users can become editors and producers, or what is commonly known as “produsers” or “produsage” (Bruns 2008, 2009, 2011). These platforms encourage active engagement, and intensification of participatory culture and further contribute to the profusion of digital content. As a result, we see social media users sharing content of different genres, be this on their everyday life at work/school/home, on lifestyle and fashion, religious knowledge and practices, including food and restaurant reviews, and humour and satire. They even allow them to act as amateur journalists reporting on local and global happenings.