The Local Communities's Perspectives on Technologies: Benefit or Detriment

Abstract

It is undeniable that technologies have brought people all around the world to become closer in just a single click. Internet and all social media platforms do not only allow people to easily connect with each other, but they also become a global learning stage that people can explore all kinds of information at any time. Within the scope of human rights and peace studies, technologies, nowadays, have more increasing roles in human rights advocacy and peacebuilding process, despite concerns over the issues of security and privacy. Whilst the human rights advocates and peacebuilding people are more familiar with technologies in their fields of work, the questions that remain is how the local communities view the existence of technologies and in what level they would feel comfortable applying technologies in their human rights advocacy and peacebuilding work in the local areas. This presentation is one part of the author’s PhD thesis on the issue of child marriage in Thailand. The author examines the roles of technologies, which in this presentation mainly focuses on social media platforms, in the local communities according to the opinions of local civil societies, community leaders, religious leaders, and spiritual leader. The author concludes, based on the interviews with research participants living in the Northern and Southern parts of Thailand, that the local communities’ express negative attitude towards technologies. They view that technologies encourage young adolescents’ sexual misconduct, which results to higher rate of child marriage in the regions.