Challenges and opportunities of the digital 'revolution' in Indonesia

Abstract

Digital technology is fast becoming the core of life, work, culture and identity in Indonesia. In a young nation with a median age of 28 and a rapidly growing urban middle class, Indonesians are using digital technologies in ways that have made the world take notice. In 2016 Indonesia had 76 million Facebook users, the fourth highest number in the world. Jakarta has been named the world’s ‘most active city on Twitter’ (Lipman 2012), while other platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp, LINE, Path and Telegram are all being used in unique and dynamic ways. It is now commonplace to walk into a cafe in one of Indonesia’s cities and see a group of young Indonesians all sitting in silence, eyes fixed on their mobile phones. Even outside the cities, there is voracious demand for admittance into the digital world. In research exploring the ‘improbability’ of a nation with over 13,0000 islands, a coastline of 54,000 kilometres and a population of 250 million with dozens of ethnicities, journalist Elisabeth Pisani (2014: 3) observed villagers climbing trees in order to get 2G phone reception; ‘Millions of Indonesians live on $2 a day and are on Facebook’, she wrote