Social media to the rescue

Forget fliers and posters. Alerting the masses to locate missing people has now gone high-tech. Social media is at your service - and it's doing it in seconds. These past few days we have seen a great deal of national media coverage on the missing Dubai teacher Kirsty McLaughlin. In the wake of this gut-wrenching story, the entire online community in the UAE embarked on a frantic search with posts relating to her whereabouts getting more than 67,000 people talking on Facebook within 24 hours. The Scottish expat was finally reunited with her family and how! A Dubai Police official admitted that the huge social media campaign prompted police to take swift action in the case. This is testimony to how social networking is proving to be a dramatic success.
Also read: Missing Dubai teacher Kirsty McLaughlin found via Social Media 
Social media use in the region is exploding and it has become a frequent habit. The number of Internet users in the Arab World is expected to rise to about 226 million by 2018, states the Arab Knowledge Economy report 2015-2016. The Internet penetration rate will jump from about 37.5 per cent in 2014 to over 55 per cent in 2018. In the UAE alone, 7.5 million people access Facebook every month, that's 88 per cent of all the Internet users. With this level of user engagement in the country, it would be silly of us not to resort to social media to help those on need. Police here are increasingly using digital platforms to connect with residents and share information on community issues. We are finding lost people now faster than ever and social media no doubt is flattening the world.