In an increasingly connected world, social media has become an undeniable force. Almost every aspect of our social worlds have been irreversibly changed by its impact, for better and for worse. But, for communities often left at the margins of digitisation, its impact is even more complicated.
Despite constituting around six percent of the global population, and contributing more than any other group to culture and environmental protection worldwide, Indigenous Peoples have generally been overlooked, misunderstood and, in many cases, actively targeted by governments and majority populations. Many face extreme poverty and regularly deal with the denial of basic political and social rights.
However, like the rest of the world, technology and social media have become integral to many of their lives. For instance, almost 90 percent of Indigenous Garo farmers in India use their mobile phones for work. And, like the rest of the world, the results of reliance on the Internet have been mixed, to say the least. Many, both inside and outside of Indigenous populations, fear that traditional ways of life have changed since smartphones came along, despite the multitude of new earning opportunities that they offer. But why shouldn’t Indigenous people benefit from the “new services, workforce transformation, and business innovation” that the web and social media can bring?
The Chittagong Hill Tracts communities
A recent three-month study explores the challenges faced by young Indigenous social media users in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Home to 11 distinct Indigenous communities collectively known as the Jumma people, CHT boasts a rich culture that’s largely distinct from the general Bengali population.
The Bangladesh government has long seen the Chittagong Hill Tracts as empty land onto which it can move poor Bengali settlers, with scant regard for the area’s Jumma inhabitants. Displacement is a huge issue in this region. However, the Bangladeshi government has also been accused of murder, torture, rape and the burning of villages in what has been described as a genocidal campaign against the Jumma since the country gained independence in 1971.
In the face of this discrimination, Jumma people have been using the advent of social media in their communities to connect and build solidarity as well as strengthen their political voices in the face of important national days like International Indigenous Day. They use social media, particularly Facebook, to preserve their endangered Indigenous culture by uploading traditional songs and sharing festival practices such as the Marma Water Festival. Social media also plays a big part in allowing the community to highlight injustices. The recent viral resurgence of interest in Kalpana Chakma, a missing Indigenous activist whose story gained visibility during Bangladesh’s Quota Reform Movement, is a testament to this.
Resurfacing old wounds
These benefits, however, come at a cost. The same platforms that empower Indigenous communities also expose them to major issues. Posts about traditional clothing or festivals are often met with ridicule or moral judgment from Bengali users. Young users also face criticism from within their own communities via social media for adopting elements of Bengali culture, such as wearing sarees. Instances of tourists and influencers turning up in the CHT and jostling for recordings of Indigenous people without asking for their prior consent exacerbate these misunderstandings.
These are not abstract concerns. They are, according to the study, “lived vulnerabilities” rooted in histories of exclusion, colonisation and state neglect. Videos capturing their intimate daily lives have sometimes been paired with mocking or inflammatory captions to drive engagement. Obviously, this is a gross violation of privacy that’s hard to monitor and even harder to control.
Fake news, misrepresentation and rampant mischaracterisation of Jumma communities spread like wildfire through Bangladeshi social media. In recent years, Bangladeshi media outlets have reported multiple violent incidents in CHT, many of which originated from social media posts. In fact, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research reveals that these marginalised groups face “regular and systematic discrimination and cyberbullying”. Despite the increasing dependency on social media platforms for communication and daily life in CHT, the impact of social media within Indigenous communities as a whole remains largely underexplored.
Navigating social media’s opportunities while mitigating its risks
Researchers from BRAC University, Bowie State University, and United International University, who went to CHT to conduct interviews with 30 participants for the study, found that social media plays a “dual role” in these communities. While it serves as a vital tool for cultural preservation and advocacy in a politically hostile environment, there are also huge risks associated with its use that need to be carefully mitigated.
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Participants also spoke of self-censorship on political topics out of fear of abduction or violence. Misinformation in the Raozan murder case, for instance, portrayed Indigenous people as cannibalistic. But social media doesn’t just mirror offline discrimination—it amplifies and mutates it.
This harm doesn’t just end after a meme has finished its rounds. They ripple outward, affecting job prospects, campus life and personal safety. Indigenous students in urban areas, such as university campuses and public transport, have been intimidated and even assaulted.
Recommendations for a just digital future
So, what’s the ideal outcome? Obviously, Indigenous people are just as entitled to use social media as the rest of the population. But how can they be kept safe, and even better, supported and empowered? The study makes several key recommendations. First, multi-layered privacy settings should enable Indigenous users to curate posts for different audiences, such as family, peers or outsiders.
It also suggests that digital “healing circles”, modelled on Indigenous practices, could offer spaces for reflection, community building and support after incidents of online harm. Ideally, these would be facilitated by respected elders. Investment in content moderation in minority languages was another important suggestion. This is a consistent failure across most platforms and has been critiqued in several recent studies which highlight the inequality that’s perpetuated when digital discourse is not monitored and protected in so-called “low resource” languages.
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Finally, the study suggests that community-led content creation should be prioritised. Helping the wider community get to know and understand the people of the CHT through digital storytelling projects and activist campaigns might actually help to close the gap in misunderstanding and prejudice.
The study concluded that the Indigenous youth of the CHT are not passive users; they are builders of new digital worlds. Social media is allowing them—and, most likely, other young Indigenous communities—to connect with their culture, defend their identity and resist erasure. But their labour is done on unsafe terrain. If we want a just internet, it must be co-created with those on its margins, not just translated for their convenience, if at all. In the words of one participant, “Every time we are silent, we lose a part of our story. Social media lets us speak. But we need space to speak safely.”
