A Future Study on Social Media Use With the Emergence of Ai in Malaysia and Indonesia

This study explored the future uses of social media in Malaysia and Indonesia. As of February 2022, there were 28.68 million social media users in Malaysia and 167.0 million in Indonesia. A 2020 Pew Research Center survey of 10,211 users in the United States found that 64 % of these users said social media had a largely negative impact, including disinformation, hatred, and harassment. In 2021, its survey found that 39 % of the users in the United States posited that by 2035, uses of social media would not change in ways that significantly serve the public good, and 18 % said social media was evolving in a mostly negative way, leading to a worse future for society. The objectives were to explore the potential, emerging trends, and future social media uses in Malaysia and Indonesia through content analysis, the Delphi survey, and triangulation. The findings revealed that potential social media uses comprised artificial intelligence-enhanced social commerce and socio-political attempts, with the need for control mechanisms enforced by the authorities. The emerging trends included the application of artificial intelligence technologies for the creation of non-traditional families and social chatbots. The preferable futures of social media use in Malaysia and Indonesia comprised augmented and virtual reality, audience analytics, conversational commerce, AI-powered chatbots, digital citizenship, and virtual campaigns against online scammers. The values of social media use in the preferred futures for Malaysia and Indonesia included narrative control, compliance with Maqasid al-Shariah, regulated technological designs, and safety in the virtual environment. The study recommended an expanded ethical guideline for social media use to ensure positive impacts and that plans for action must consider the advanced artificial intelligence technologies for regulating social media use in the future.