Muslim Youth Generation
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It is undeniable that we are living in a social media era with significant and far-reaching consequences. Indonesian youths are the most active social media users among Asian youths, at 87.4 percent (CSIS, 2017).
What can we do with the social media generation in Indonesia? Surely, we cannot simply stay silent. This is a digital era that has encroached on the sacred realm of religion, so much so that a new phrase has emerged: the virtualization and digitalization of sanctity in public space.
A May 2016 survey by The Wahid Foundation showed findings similar to the CSIS study. Of the surveyed 1,600 high school students in Greater Jakarta who take part in their schools’ extracurricular Islamic spirituality group (kerohanian Islam, or rohis), 38 percent use Instagram daily and 14 percent use LinkedIn daily.
It is worrying that the current generation of youths reads and gains information on Islam from social media channels instead of from clerics who engage in sincere dialog. Therefore, it is high time for clerics, preachers and Islamic religious teachers to observe our local youths’ tendency of becoming more familiar with social media than with thick books. If the language used in these books is complicated, we cannot expect young people to read them!
Our Muslim youth are members of the social media generation and not of the conventional reading-and-writing generation. Many young Muslims today are more interested in celebrity clerics who appear on TV shows, because many of these clerics are active social media users.
The Wahid Foundation findings should be at the center of our attention. As the world’s most populous Muslim nation, with Muslims accounting for 88.7 percent of our population, such a phenomenon is highly significant for anyone wishing to learn about Indonesian Islam. It is not necessary anymore for Islam to struggle in a physical space, as this space is no longer identical with houses, open fields or universities. Today’s space is social media.
Our Muslim youth are born in a wide-open space that is almost borderless. They are the generation who can access information anytime and anywhere, from the moment they wake up in the morning until they go to bed at night. There is no more private space, as social media controls all spaces and enclaves.
Social media is an invisible being that is right in front of our eyes in all its glory. No one can stop it. There will be only regret if we choose to fight social media by controlling fields or any space in the conventional meaning, as these people no longer need them.
Future of religion
If preachers remain steadfast in their conventional principles, their congregations will surely leave them. They will still have people following them, but only those born before the 1980s – the older and frail generation. Meanwhile, our future generation – those born in and after the 1990s – will no longer be interested in the conventional way of spreading religion.
The most significant repercussion for people of the social media generation is their reluctance to read anything they consider too complicated and books that they consider too thick, especially if the topics do not interest them. This future generation of youths – commonly called Generation Z or millennials – is a generation terribly active in and attracted to social media. They can never be without their smartphones and the social media channels that they deem as the most effective and efficient medium of communication.
The greatest challenge for the social media generation is their neglect of fostering serious reading and writing habits. What we will have, then, is a generation with low reading and writing skills along with their various dimensions. Then, it will be more difficult to nurture a superior and wiser society in Indonesia.
Therefore, we need to formulate strategic measures to prevent our social media generation from going “blind and deaf” to the realities of life that are in front of them. This is especially so when our preachers busy themselves only with creating demarcations of us vs. them: of the brotherhood and the “other”. This is despite such demarcations being the mere commodification of religion in the political arena ahead of the 2018 simultaneous regional elections and the 2019 presidential elections.
Ladies and gentlemen, social media is an intoxicating, virtual fact. There is no other way to fight it but with positive virtual messages. We cannot fight the social media generation, with all its virtualization and generalization, by banning them from using social media. This is because by the social media generation generally views bans as negative. Providing alternatives is the wisest way to go.
We need to wake up immediately and realize that our future depends on our social media-crazed generation of youths instead of on the older generation with no social media prowess. Therefore, in the future, religions must respond to what this social media generation needs. If religion cannot provide them with answers, then do not be surprised if only the older generations show up at Qur’an recitals or prayers at mosques.
Strengthening understanding
Here, the state must command a role. The state must be more than just a supervisor and firefighter that bans, shuts down or punishes the social media generation for being highly active and creative in using social media in public spaces. They are representatives of a generation that is “highly media-aware” in public space, and their number is huge.
People who have no social media prowess cannot fight the spreading of hoaxes, insults and hatred. The uncritical members of the social media generation will eat up any information they find, as they cannot distinguish genuine information from the fake.
Therefore, we must be able to strengthen the social media generation’s understanding, foundation of knowledge and social media literacy in line with their aspirations. We should not punish them with social sanctions and classic fiqh (Islamic laws), as these will never deter them. Use the social media generation’s potential towards building positive wisdom for individuals, the nation and the state.
We must not drown ourselves with hatred, insults, hoaxes and political ambitions that often use religion as a basis for their legitimacy, and try to control public spaces through the conventional “shock and awe” means of displaying mass power.
ZULY QODIR
Sociologist, Observer of Indonesian Islam
