Real internet assets yet to be exploited among youths

Hotmail, Yahoo (Yellow smiling face icon), Web cam, chat,Voice chat, Internet, E-mail, Broadband, Lease line.... These are some of the titles in which people are being engaged with. Everybody looks busy eying at monitor, fingering the mouse and typing on keyboard. Yes, this scribe is talking about a typical road-side cyber cafes in capital city, Kathmandu.

The internet and e-mail facilities that started from private sector since mid 1990s have been gradually integrating into Nepalese people's everyday life like the television and telephone. The trend of cyber cafes also started becoming most popular for browsing internet and extremely famous among the youths aged between around 14-24 years.

As the Nepalese youths are becoming computer literate and IT learned, they are also accepting invasion of developed countries over the web (information superhighway) and are not yet fully aware of the negative contents and its impact that the developed countries facing these days. The inappropriate and easily accessible things like pornography and unnecessary long-hours of web surfing can pose as a bad influence to the children and hamper them psychologically.

The use of internet among youths in Nepal is still under-utilization, most of youths use it just for chatting, adult sites and limited mail corresponding. They are fascinated with IT technology and yet not aware of good use of internet. Even chatting with same country friends or international friends for useful and reasonable matter can band good bond between two friends and share information on culture, tradition, life style, science and technology and etc. It can also be used for sex education and HIV/AIDS awareness and online jobs that are gaining momentum in Nepal.

The use of internet access broadens the horizon of virtual contacts worldwide, informative and educative contents that it contains are limitless and those material on the Web can be asset for everyone if know how to make right 'click' and 'enter'.  

"I do not usually click on the mails that come from unknown contacts because these junk mails either lure me for lottery or foreign job which are totally fake and waste my time," said Ria Sharma, a student of 12 from Whitehouse College, New Baneshwor. Internet has been really useful for me, I find it as a good reference to get world knowledge about anything which has helped me many times to accomplish my home assignments and projects, added she.

Ria informed that she visited cyber cafes thrice a week and spends more than one hour for emailing, chatting, searching about educations, courses in international colleges and making new friends.

Akash Shah, Lekhnath Bhandari and Binay Budathoki are students of Kantipur Hotel Management College, Buddhanagar. They surf the net once or twice a week. “It is our cheapest, fastest, and the most convenient medium of communication and helps us to search any information we need,” they said.

Akash added that in early days of internet use, he visited cyber café even three times a day and spend more than one hour for visiting sites and chatting. “Everything seems normal now, I use it for time pass, friendship and basically for communication,” he added.

According to Birendra Shrestha, owner of Einstein Cyber Café, New Baneshwor, most of the visitors are regular and youths who spend more than one hour for email, net meeting with friends and visit desired sites. “Everything has bad and good sides, but they should go for good purpose like; search for job facilities nationally and internationally, gathering world information and even they can work online part time or full-time job,” added Shrestha.  

Nepali society, being a closed one, does not digest talking openly about sex and sexual problems too. It is natural phenomenon to be curious about such information in young age. “Even if someone enjoys surfing adult material, s/he does not visit same contents seven days a week,” says Kedar Sharma, an IT expert cum freelance journalist.

“The good days of internet use are all set to come,” he added. If you know how to search the information through the search engine, you can get the knowledge about everything in the world. He further added, websites like wikipedia.org and googlearth are some of the examples of how internet technology can provide you information.

Dev Raj Khanal, Director of Freedom Online Business Private Limited which also runs an online job says youths who have spare time and access to internet can earn 6,000 to 10,000 per month by using 2 hours of internet everyday.

According to Khanal who himself is just 22 years, his company has more than 8,000 online job seekers lined-up for work from Nepal and foreign countries like; India, Maldives and Philippines. He already has registered 600 online workers in Kathmandu alone and 40 percent of them belong to youth group.

The opportunities, education, entertainment, and information have overwhelmed the internet. But the people having benefited from this facility are limited, almost dominated by city people. It needs to reach rural areas to educate and empower youths so that they could send email to their loved ones when they go abroad to earn money. On the other hand, it can also be used for reducing poverty, public health, gender equity/equality, agriculture among others.

"We have technology, manpower and enthusiasm but no good and timely policy from government to promote us in rural areas," said Pavan S. Shakya, President of Internet Service Providers Association of Nepal (ISPAN) and   Director of Public Relations of World Link Communications (P) Ltd. More Nepali contents should be developed targeting information for rural areas in Nepali language, he added.

According to recent Management Information System (MIS) data of Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), there are 44,569 subscribers of internet including all from dial-up, wireless and cable. It is believed that each subscriber share it with at least four other users who do not have internet access of his own.

Shakya claimed that there were more than 250,000 internet users in Nepal. Since internet is widely popular among youths, it is sure that they are the major users. 

As Nepal Telecom (NT) is all set to launch internet with optical fiber system in collaboration with Indian IT companies BNSL and Bharati Airtel of India, the internet connectivity will be ten times faster than now reducing the current price down by 50 percent, said an NT official.

After the utilization of the East-West laid (Bhadrapur-Lamahi) optical fiber cable, it will set yet another milestone in IT sector in Nepal. More youths who are in area of optical fiber reach, will be able to access internet at cheap price. But for the youths of rural Nepal, this technology will not be accessible due to geographical complexity. The government should bring the wireless connectivity and renewable energy for rural areas and develop telecom infrastructure with sound policy implementation.