Youth will be misled owing to Internet addiction: businessman

Editor’s Note: Supachai Verapuchong is deputy managing director of Thai Nakorn Patana, one of Thailand’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. In the following article adapted from his interview with Tuoitrenews earlier this month, Supachai criticizes young people for getting addicted to cyberspace nowadays and warns of its consequences. The businessman also offers his own definition of success in modern times. 

When I was very young I never believed that I will have a smartphone to do everything. I can work on it at 8:00 am or reply to emails at midnight when I am in bed. But everything has pros and cons, and I want to draw people’s attention to the other side of the coin.

In the past it was very difficult for us to find a bad movie. But today we can have all very bad things like this on the smartphone. I feel that young people pay too much attention to the online world and lack a profound knowledge of current affairs. According to a survey, young Thai people spend 4.5 hours per day on the Internet. And it is still increasing. So that means they sleep for 8 hours and chat for 25 to 30 percent of the remaining day. What worries me is young people often chat about nonsense online and become crazy about things that are not beneficial to their life at all.  

Let me take one example of how young people get addicted to cyberspace. One day I had dinner with my wife and four daughters, a rare occasion we could be together as I am normally very busy with my business. I felt really scared then when my daughters did not talk to each other but they were chatting on their smartphones. I told my wife that “we’ve got to stop them from immersing themselves in that ‘fake’ world full of lies and traps.”

If the new generation keeps behaving that way, they will be misled by bad people because they have very little experience. They will not know how to communicate with everyone in real life and fail to understand what is good, what is bad since they only believe in nice words that can be found everywhere on the Net. You can say very good words through chat even when you are monsters. The young will easily become very silly and stupid in this manner as they have no experience to understand the world in a natural way. I am really worried!

Some may say that young people will change themselves and adapt to survive and succeed in life without guidance by older people, but I do not think so. The youth can become rich but richness alone is not necessarily success. It is just a pathway. Their goal in life should be sharing happiness with others, not merely looking for wealth. The world is worshipping money and economic success so it is senior people’s duty to lead the way and help young people realize that affluence is not the goal of being born to be a human being. I lean more towards goodness and good spirit when it comes to the definition of success. In that fashion my advice would be keep working to succeed in business but ultimately try to bring more benefits to the world with a giving heart. Money is one part but money must come with honesty.