In January this year (2021) there were 937,000 Facebook users in Papua New Guinea according to one data set available on the Internet.

This data can be accessed at this website address: https://napoleoncat.com/

According to this source, the January figure accounted for 10.4% of the total population of PNG using Facebook that month. The majority of our Facebook users were men at 59.9% while people aged between 18 and 24 were the largest user group at 330,000.

The report adds: “The highest difference between men and women occurs within people aged 25 to 34, where men lead by 70 000” who accessed Facebook in January.”

The fact that newly one million people in PNG used Facebook in January is encouraging as long as users were doing things that were more profitable to their lives as individuals, members of families and communities and ultimately the nation.

Majority of January is part of the holiday season so my guess is that the numbers may have picked up as the formal work and school year set into motion from the end of January onwards.

The January data suggests our young people studying in educational institutions and the educated working class folks plus those engaged in private business are on Facebook. We can draw that conclusion because you have to be literate to open a Facebook account and use it and access other FB pages.

In my regular forays onto the Facebook forums and other professional and personal sites, I am encouraged to see a growing number of our Members of Parliament have FB pages under their names and identities as MPs of their districts and provinces.

The MPs with Facebook accounts are sharing news, information, photographs and short videos about events and developments taking place in the districts and provinces. I make an exception here that I hate to see some of the outright chest-beating propaganda, political self-defence, muck-racking and hanging up of the dirty linen of political opponents.

On the affirmative side though, the efforts of some of the MPs to use Facebook in a deliberate way to promote their work as mandated leaders is a welcome development from the point of view of communicating national development news and information.

At the same time Facebook enables the important task of mandated leaders to inform the constituents, the general public, the State and other stakeholders.

The great thing about Facebook is that the platform allows feedback, suggestion and criticism about the things that the MPs or their staff post on those official Facebook pages. This is one of the greatest benefits from Facebook for the good of democracy.

As always, some of the feedback to the MPs on their Facebook pages other pages may not be all that good and can be defamatory. But the good thing about Facebook is that those managing the pages can delete malicious feedback.

Many other groups of people such as the those in the small to medium enterprise (SME) sector are using Facebook to market themselves and the goods and services they have on offer. This again is encouraging.

So generally just about every sectoral group, be they in the public sector, private sector, non-government, churches, educational institutions, all are using Facebook to promote themselves and share information, knowledge and products and services they have on offer.

Facebook Corporation says the following about the platform’s mission, which thousands of Papua New Guineans are living by today:

“Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

“People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.”

From the standpoint of our country’s development, Facebook and of course, the other social media platforms, are becoming important tools to enhance national development besides the above stated mission of Facebook Corporation. More so, Facebook is encouraging the growth of our democracy in terms of free speech, freedom of assembly and so forth. Lest we forget, it was not long ago before the deregulation of the mobile telecommunication sector in 2007 that many members of the public used to complain about the traditional mainstream media not doing enough to give voice to the voiceless. Well, alas, Facebook is here. It is doing the trick. Our people are out there on Facebook expressing their views and highlighting issues that would otherwise not have seen the light of day.

Nowadays, we see national leaders and bureaucrats plus the mainstream media are being made to speak up by those posting information on Facebook.

We read in the newspapers and see on the broadcast media journalists stating that a certain information “went viral on social media (often referring to Facebook)” or “Facebook was alight” hence the article they are writing as feedback from those implicated by a Facebook post. Isn’t that wonderful for our democracy – making leaders and others implicated to give their sides of the stories.

The journalists tend to use those terms to show that the information was widely discussed on Facebook and those implicated or mentioned, especially leaders and bureaucrats had to respond by way of speaking through the traditional media.

I am not trying to paint a rosy picture of Facebook or any social media platform – they have their serious downside when people post false information or dramatize events without checking facts properly or balancing the information they post.

There are also low-minded people posting rubbish about personal lives of others. We can do without them if people teach themselves to be responsible users of Facebook.

What I am pointing out is that Facebook and other social media are tools that can really boost national development or provide great visibility in the processes of accountability, integrity and national development when thy platforms are used appropriately with due regard for the rights of others.