When Worlds Collide #101: Safely Riding the Social Media Dragon

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today broadsheet newspaper on 29 March 2014

“We have to start asking not what is wrong with Facebook but what is wrong with our society?”

Those words, by Dr Harini Amarasuriya, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University of Sri Lanka, sum up neatly the debate that has been going on for some weeks in Sri Lanka on the pros and cons of social media.

In an interview with Ceylon Today on 16 February 2014, Dr Amarasuriya also noted: “Social media is here to stay whether we like it or not. It is only a tool and it can be either liberating or exploitative. A young person’s life is mostly on social media today; we simply need to teach them how to manage it.”

First, how big is social media in Sri Lanka?

Most Lankan Internet users…