So Malaysia coming tops in social media penetration rankings in South East Asia and 5th in the world is something to shout about, or so it seems.

This reminds me of how I felt like vomiting when a deputy minister proudly boasted that Malaysia had the highest number of Facebook users per capita in 2011, according to a report which came out at the time.

I have been on some WhatsApp chat groups and found that people blindly forward all sorts of stuff on politics and so forth to the chat groups, which others believe as gospel truth a forward on virally and when I did a search on the issues or reports at hand in the posts, I've often found them to either be fake, dated, relate to some other country, related to events or reports which are years old and in some cases true.

For instance, there was a warning going around WhatsApp media a couple of years back that the Ministry of Interior Regulation would be monitoring all social media postings, so we should beware of what we post online.

Now Malaysia has no ministry by the name "Ministry of Interior Regulation", so I did a search online and found that the Ministry of Interior of the REPUBLIC OF GHANA had officially denied such allegation on its website.

Well, this WhatsApp message had originated in Ghana and as far as I know, it found its way virally to India and also to Malaysia.

I informed the WhatsApp group of my findings but weeks later someone forwarded the same message about the "Ministry of Interior Regulation" to the WhatsApp group again. It's a waste of my time trying to educate morons who can't be educated, despite how much one tries.

I also have found that many people who access social media on smartphones and tablets, even on PCs, are either too lazy or are incapable of doing a basic Google search to find reliable sources of information which can verify the authenticity of the post they had received, and many of these people are educated, English-literate, tech-savvy middle-class professionals.

I also know of some people who know WhatsApp and other social media backwards but do not know how to write a personal or business letter using a word processor even if it will save their lives, and their idea of sending a copy of an important document is to snap a picture of it, when the perspective of such a document is inevitably distorted in pictures snapped. Such people may not have the facilities to scan documents, in which case they should take it to a photocopy shop which will scan it for a fee. On the other hand, they have a scanner but are too lazy to scan it or don't know how to. or maybe they have scanned it using a computer but don't know how to get the document into their phone, either by cable or Bluetooth.

In the case of WhatsApp, one can access their WhatsApp through a web browser on their PC via https://web.whatsapp.com/, which allows them to upload scanned images and documents from the PC into their WhatsApp posts or to download pictures,documents, videos, audio files and so forth from WhatsApp to their PC's hard disk.

However, it appears than many are either unaware of how to access WhatsApp web, don't bother learn or are too lazy to do so, and they will lead Malaysia to become a "knowledge-based", "information-rich", high-income" economy ???? C'mon give me a break!

If they don't have a PC or still want to use their smartphone or tablet, there increasingly are affordable WiFi-enabled printers and scanners in the stores which let people print on them and scan from them on their phones or tablets over their home or office WiFi router or directly via WiFi between the phone and the printer or scanner. All they need to do is to connect their phone or tablet to the printer or scanner's WiFi access point. Of course they will not be able to access the web, social media or WhatsApp, whilst their phone or tablet is connected to their printer/scanner's WiFi access point. If they want to get back to the Internet, just connect back to the home or office WiFi access point or use their mobile data connection.

Also, some printer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard had tied up with Google Cloud Print in 2011 to provide you with a unique @hpeprint.com e-mail address for your WiFi-enabled Hewlett-Packard printer, so you can e-mail your documents to your printer from your phone, tablet or PC from anywhere as long as you have Internet access. I've found that if your printer is off, it will access eprint when its turned on and successfully connects to your home or office WiFi router and soon after the documents you sent will print out. Just don't tell everyone about this unique e-mail address or any Tom, Dick and Harry will be sending all kinds of junk to your printer and you'll end up having to fork out plenty of money to replace your ink or toner cartridges

All this is possible if phone and tablet users care to read the manual, they can learn how to do this with their model of printer but it seems that such tech-savvy people regard reading anything other than comics as so "old fashioned" or "uncool".

Oh yes, they also need to install the print and scan app relevant to their printer or scanner for their Android or Applie iOS smartphone or tablet for this to work and this should not be a problem, considering that such people are most probably experts at installing hundreds of frivolous apps from Google Playstore or the Apple Appstore on their phones.

Then they can scan documents directly to their phone and send them with their social media messages.

However, it appears that the more social media there is around, the less savvy people become in performing productive tasks on their smartphones, tablets or PCs.

Is this how Malaysia will become a "knowledge-based, high-income nation" by 2020, now postponed to 2024 ???

I asked Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak when he was Education Minister whether smart schools will produce a generation of idiots by the year 2020.

He replied "no". That was well over 10 or 15 years ago but I leave you to look round today and decide for yourself who is right - i.e. Najib or IT.Scheiss.

Article in The Sun follows below:-

Malaysia ranks top 5 globally in mobile social media penetration, highest in region

31 Jan 2019 / 11:18 H

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia was ranked top five globally and highest in Southeast Asia for mobile social media penetration, according to Hootsuite and We Are Social in their latest Digital 2019 report.

Internet penetration in Malaysia said the report, stood at 80% with users spending a daily average of eight hours and five minutes online.

"A healthy portion of this time, two hours and 58 minutes is attributed to social media consumption.

"Emerging fourth globally in mobile social penetration, Malaysia is in the lead among Southeast Asian countries including Singapore is in sixth place, followed by Thailand (eighth) and the Philippines (10)," they said in a joint statement today.

Malaysia according to them, presented a unique opportunity for businesses, which 75% of the internet users spent their money via e-commerce with 58% spending on mobile commerce platforms.

The country as highlighted by the report, edged out Singapore in the adoption of mobile banking, with 66 per cent of the internet users in Malaysia utilised mobile banking options compared to Singapore's 64%.

This reflected their increasing dependence on mobile platforms.

"Ride hailing applications also proved to be highly popular in Malaysia, 48% of internet users used such an app, the third highest globally behind Singapore and Indonesia," it said. — Bernama