HOW CAN CADETS AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

MAXIMIZE THE USAGE OF TECHNOLOGY (SOCIAL

MEDIA) IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THEIR CAPABILITIES
AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
COUNTRY IN THE FUTURE

UDRAYANA.A.R.DHARMASANDHI and
UDRAJAKA.O.G.DHARMASANDHI

Indonesia Military Academy, Magelang

ray.rahyudha@gmail.com
udrajaka@gmail.com

1. Abstract

The existence of the internet has made it possible for people to

communicate with others across the globe, disparaging the distance

and disability to reach each other as easily as now compared to

previously. The most common platform of internet communication is

Social Media, where easy accessibility, able to communicate

between users, existence of a wide variety of information, and the

enabling of uploading mass and multiple data are the great features

social media possesed. These features are then what made it able

for information to reach people quickly in a wider range. Therefore,

people nowadays are able to acquire knowledge easily in order for

them to improve their capabilities in areas they want, where social

media played a great part in the process by providing tutorials,

articles, as well as online step-by-step instructions that are all

available on the web, mainly promoted by social media. Other than

its usage on education improvement, social media also gave an

impact on the cultural understanding of its users. As information

shared on social media are diverse, constant showcase of other

countries culture can also reach social media users in Indonesia who

mainly consists of the youths. When this happens, it will depend on

the mindset every social media users have to react to the foreign

culture infiltration whether they will take on its good benefits into use,

or indulge themselves in the temptation and lose the values they

held.

2. Background

In the current 21st century, the usage of social media is not

avoidable. Almost every aspect of life uses social media for each of

their own benefits. The education sector isn’t an exception. But does

social media always gives benefits? Or is there another impact from

it? Since the founding of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Project

Agency Network) by the United States in 1969 and its publicity in

1972. The way people communicate change entirely. Fast, reliable,

and and innovative. The ARPANET quickly boomed in the 70s which

lead to what we now know as the Internet today. As time goes by, the

internet is a media for people to exchange data and communicate

with each other. It all began with Virtual Newsletters in the 70s and

followed by Internet Relay Chats or IRLs in the 80s. It is not until 1997

that the first recognisable social media site Six Degree was invented.

By the 2000s, social media sites boomed and sites like Myspace and

Facebook appeared and Chat Apps such as Yahoo Messenger

followed afterwards. Communicating couldn’t become easier. This

changed the way people lived their lives. Many aspects of live

gradually use this new media to their benefit where the education

sector is one of them. The method of e-learning in the education

world is an example of what the internet and social media have given

an impact to on our daily lives. Easy communication and fast data

exchange are just a part of the positive side that social media

provided. But what about the negative impact that it gave on our
lives? When exposed to various information accumulated from

across the globe, what will change of the cultural perspective social

media users in Indonesia view beforehand? With the constant

exposure of foreign culture, can the younger generation held their

values up high and not be influenced by the foreign culture

infiltration? Especially for cadets and university students who are also

not spared by the technology improvement that has introduced social

media existence to them?

3. Complication

a. Internet and its effect to the world

From what we have learned from the background, there are

different types of effect occurred from the usage of the Internet.

For example, the ability to a faster communication between

people around the world. This allows globalization to happen

as information can now be reached by many people around

the world regardless of their location reducing the initially far-

fetched distance from each other. The most common platform

used as a communication channel is Social Media which has

several types mainly named; Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram.

These channels usage can be varied from daily life updates

from individuals, a platform for business marketing, as well as

widespread information of education.

b. The impact of social media on current education

Nowadays, social media is rapidly changing the

communication setting of today’s social world. The emergent

of social media is significantly influencing the academic life of

students. Institutions and academician are continually trying

with social media technologies hoping to excite critical thinking

skills, collaboration, and knowledge construction. Today social

media has been accepted by higher institution making it a

platform where students connect with their instructors, fellow

students and other higher authorities across the board.

Advantages

The current technology of e-learning is perhaps one of

mankind's best innovations yet. With the pact schedule that

people have and the limited time that most people have, e-
learning offers a system that can grant both students and

lecturer access to communicate one and another 24 hours a

day and 7 days a week through social media platform such as

Whatsapp, Email, and Facebook. This enables Lecturer to

upload points and materials of the subject that the class is

currently discussing to class group chats, enables chat talks

between students and lecturers on the subject of discussion

either from direct chat or with multiple chats uploading media

and materials online in order for the students to access it

whenever and wherever they may be. This is possible through

the usage of video demonstrations and file sharing features.

Apart from the direct chats platform used as a communication

method, other social media such as Instagram and Facebook

also enables various tutoring institutions to share bitesize

(very small or short) knowledge in the posts posted in their

respective social media page. This can then be used for

students to review their learning materials and may also incite

a curiosity from students who initially had no interest in certain

subjects when they stumble across the posts incidentally, then

possibly encouraging them to learn new knowledge

afterwards.

A real life application of this can be taken from ‘Quipper’, an

online learning institution that provides various learning

material through the use of video files which concludes

experts who explains various subject materials based on

Indonesian curriculum standard. To attract and encourage

students to join them and improve their studies, ‘Quipper’

constantly provide posts in their social media accounts in the

form of bitesize information taken from certain parts of the

learning materials of a subject as well as post compilations of

formulas and its general understanding of its usage. These

relatively simple posts are mostly what the necessary

summary students need thus, students often save various

posts from institutions similar to ‘Quipper’ on their social media

account where it will be used during their learning session later

on. This is a great stimulation for the cadets and university

students to start learning when they’re in the middle of

delaying their works. As the instance educational posts pops

up in their social media feed, it may incite an urge to start

learning and resume their tasks once again.

Disadvantages

Social media has been around for more than a decade. It has

shown different kinds of impacts towards its users. For

example, social media has been advancing in terms of its

features. It allows the user to customize their presence in the

social media. This caused addiction to many people, as they

want to optimize the best out of their social media presence.

Thus, the existence of social media itself often cause a

downside impact rather than a positive result as students are

easily swayed to use social media to improve their social

standing rather than focusing to take its benefits to learn.

Relatively, social media in this aspect is a double-edged

sword. It depends on the individuals who use them to

maximize its features in order to improve their knowledge, or

 regards its existence as a space to entertain themselves with

no benefits. Within the existence of direct chats feature on

social media, rather than to utilise it to share knowledge with

each other, it often caused a distraction when other chats not

related to education are sent by friends or family. Students

may delay their learning progress in order to answer these

chats thus, slowing their learning pace. If these distractions

occurs daily and accumulated on a long period, the time

students have wasted would then be plenty. This

phenomenon is called ‘procrastination’ which is a big problem

towards students nowadays as they are often indolent and

unspirited to finish their tasks as they’re distracted by social

media. Therefore, the benefits of social media can be

maximized fully depends on its users, whether they are willing

to stay focused or allow themselves to indulge on other

features of social media.

c. How social media affects the cultural behaviour of the

youth
The youth today dominates the usage of social media. They

are able to access different kind of social media from any

device and learn many different cultures portrayed on the web.

This affects the behaviour of youths and their perspective of

life, as they are now more reliant towards social media and the

various accounts of figures across the world they follow.

Other than that, the existence of social media has become

somewhat a necessity for the youths to have a social media

account where they often view social standing as a big

importance.

Advantages

The impact of social media towards this generation is both

positive and negative. The positive aspect is that this

generation can enjoy the benefit of expanding their social

circle as wide as possible, enabling them to acquire new

friends and acquaintances through medium such as

Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, etc. As social media is a free

platform where people can share their indigenous ideas and

showcase their talents to the world, numerous people have

naturally gain a presence and popularity within their area of

expertise after showcasing their capabilities through social

media. When people with similar interests are aware of the

existence of other with similar capability, they are then able to

contact the other party through their social media accounts

and made it possible a future collaboration to happen. This

phenomenon made it possible for people to expand their

social circle where knowledge and ideas from various areas of

their respective competence can be shared with each other.

Apart from the point above, the existence of these internet

stars may influence the behaviour of the youths who follows

their creative posts on the web setting an example for the

millenials. Depends on the content of the users the youths

follow, both unsatisfactory and exemplary behaviour can be

depicted by the youths in their daily life which may also shape

their cultural behaviour and their view of the society. As

Indonesia is a country who also follow the current of the

technology improvement, almost half of the population mainly

consisting of the youths have familiarized themselves with the

use of social media. Social media which connects its users to

various other users across the globe has made it possible for

the culture and lifestyle of other countries to be known. If the

users the youths follow on social media encourages a positive

behaviour on them, then it will naturally be applied as well by

the youths in real life vice versa. For example, the existence

of various social media influencers such as participants of

beauty pageant ‘Putri Indonesia’ who promotes Indonesian’s

culture and heritage will naturally raise awareness for the

youth to understand and appreciate Indonesia’s tradition

better.

Disadvantages

The downside social media may cause depends on the

individual itself. If one chooses to follow internet figures who

spread positive knowledge, then the behaviour applied to the

real life will also naturally lean on the good side and vice versa.
But as it is now, it is widely known that youths in Indonesia

have been influenced by cultures from abroad and have

started to forget the values and principles one suppose to hold

in Indonesia. The lifestyle, behaviour, and knowledge of their

own culture often forgotten as they learn more about the

culture from other countries and apply it to their daily lives. It

is certainly not a bad thing to learn and familiarize oneself to

other countries culture as it may help us in the future when we

collaborate with expats from abroad and therefore, knowing

the other party culture can help us understand and decide on

how we should behave as to not offend them but still hold our

own values high. But the situation with the youths in Indonesia

right now, doesn’t seem to be the case. As music, tv shows,

and other types of entertainment media are highly common to

be sought by the younger generation, the various

entertainment media from abroad have infiltrate the mind of

Indonesian youngsters, introducing the culture and lifestyle

from abroad. Most common culture that has gain access to

Indonesian web are the Western, as well as East Asian

 culture. The values that both cultures hold are different from

what we Indonesians are supposed to hold. The existence of

social media, which promotes these two cultures be it from tv

shows promotions, music marketing, as well as fashion

stimulation have all influenced the mind of the younger

generations to view the information they received from the

entertainment media to follow up and implement it on their

daily life. Furthermore, constant exposure to foreign culture

will resulted in the youths to have different mindset and values.

They will naturally not regard Indonesian values as much as

they’re already used to the foreign culture they’re following. In

the long run, this is highly dangerous as younger generation

who are supposed to be upcoming leaders of Indonesia will

not hold high integrity over Indonesian’s values and may not

fully understand our country’s culture and traditions.

3. Concept

As the so called “golden generation” of Indonesia, who will assume

the role of leadership in many sectors pertaining to the state in a

global era, today’s teenagers and young adults are expected to

embrace technology and ultimately, social media too. All the benefits

and drawbacks that have been discussed in the previous paragraphs

will undoubtedly come to contact. The benefits as mentioned before,

of course, will help boost the capability of a future leader. The

drawbacks mentioned earlier, on the other hand, will be a hindrance

for the development of Indonesia as it affects the nation as a whole.

Today while preparing and educating themselves for the awaited

2045, cadets and university students alike will have to find a way to

deter the repercussion that the drawbacks might bring. Obviously this

is no easy feat, but they are nowhere near clueless. The Military

Academy as a military educational institution has long taught its

cadets the three military core values also known as Tri Pola Dasar

to plant a solid principle that one must held high. The core includes

excellence in academics, physique, and personality. The highlight

of these values in relation to the buildup of cadets’ competence is no

other than the personality aspect. The personality aspect stresses

on how cadets follow the Sapta Marga, Sumpah Prajurit, 8 Wajib

TNI and several others. These principles are values that has long
been taught to the knights and statesmen in Indonesia since the

olden days up to this day. In today’s era, these values is aimed to set

a standard on how cadets should behave, conduct, and interact.

Therefore it is expected for the cadets to hold to these values, to

avoid the negative effects of social media, and to focus on utilizing

the positive effects within social media, in order to face globalization

in the future.

On the other hand, the values of Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi can

be implemented within the concept in order to anticipate the negative

impact of using social media. Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi, which

directly translate to Three Values of Higher Education, is the core

values of higher education institute within Indonesia. It consists of

three main values: Education and Teaching, Research and

Development, and Community Service.

In the first value of Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi (TDPT). That is

Education and Teaching. This value focuses on how education is set

as a goal to develop someone and teaching is the exact method

needed in education. This can be implemented towards educating

university students about the effects of social media. In order for them

to focus on utilizing social media positively.

4. Conclusion

Despite the benefits that social media offers, it is very important that

people, especially for the younger generations who would lead the

nation in the future (Cadets and University Students) who are

constantly using social media on a daily basis to take into account

the drawbacks that it has in both education and cultural sector. As

complete eradication of social media usage isn’t exactly effective,

where it can be seen that its existence does afterall give great

benefits to its users, it will then rely solely on the mindset of

individuals who uses it. Whether they will hold their principles high

and not be swayed by the culture infiltration current and still be wise

to take on the benefits that social media provides.