The benefits of using the Internet are undeniable. Right now, as people around the world question the ability of social media to poison discourse, it can be said that the internet is the defining invention of this era. One can communicate in seconds with anyone in the world he wants. However, if a person actually looks at languages on the internet, they are telling a different story. The digital world has an “English” problem, where the language completely dominates the content that is put on the World Wide Web.
As of March 2021, English is the most commonly used language online, used by 60.4% of the top 10 million websites. It is also the most widely spoken language in the world, with over 1.13 billion speakers. In contrast, Chinese is spoken by 14.3% of the world’s population, or over 1.11 billion people, but it is only used by 1.4% of the top 10 million websites.
Russian ranks second in the ranking due to the strong online presence of Runet, the Russian-speaking community on the Internet. In addition, it is also the official language of various countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.
While English and Russian are likely to continue to dominate the digital world, Asian languages have the greatest potential for growing internet use. With an untapped audience of over a billion people, the share of languages like Chinese and Arabic could grow alongside the region’s online population.
English, a dominant language among Indian women
Now, according to a new paper commissioned by Meta (formerly Facebook), English continues to be the dominant language used online by Indian women, but at the same time, it has limited rural women’s access to social media.
The document is written by Bengaluru-based Sattva Consulting and titled “Connect, Collaborate and Create: Women and Social Media during the Pandemic”. Meta had announced the information earlier this month and said she is focusing on how social media has affected women in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has limited physical interactions and pushed women individuals to go digital, The Print reported.
According to the newspaper, 91% of women in India use English for online interactions. Only 6 percent of female users nationwide use Hindi, while Bengali is used by 1 percent.
The information comes from a meta-tool called Facebook Audience Insights, a feature for businesses to improve target content and advertise to users.
The results come from “secondary research,” including sources such as news reports and academic research. The findings are supported by “selected one-on-one interviews” with female journalists, domestic workers, urban online entrepreneurs, “urban and rural housewives” and university students.
Blatant gender imbalance
The newspaper notes that India has nearly 500 million Internet users. However, there is a “significant gender imbalance in the use of social media”, where men make up 67% of social media users in the country, while only 33% are women.
He adds that 26 million women started using the internet two years ago in 2019.
The reason women don’t use social media or the internet like men do is that fewer women own smartphones and are not digital-savvy enough to access the internet or use social media platforms.
Rural women most affected
The paper notes that these issues affect more women in rural India than in urban areas. “Currently, women in urban areas constitute the bulk of social media users. Upper-class women in urban areas are more aware of data privacy and cybersecurity than those in low-income families or rural areas. “, he indicates.
“These women cannot read the terms of use for social media, privacy updates and other app updates in English,” which prevents them from “meaningfully accessing media platforms. social, ”the newspaper said.
“I can’t read English. Due to language barriers, I haven’t seen the app settings or created a social network profile on my phone. I’m unaware of the policies of the application because they are also in English. It becomes difficult for me to sign up on these platforms without asking my family for help, “said Poornima, a domestic worker quoted in the newspaper.
In this way, women who are not fluent in English may also not be able to reap economic benefits from using social media, the newspaper said. For example, domestic workers have used social media platforms to ‘improve their skills and diversify their sources of income’, and housewives have used social media platforms to ‘develop new skills’, he said. he adds.
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