쿠웨이트 젊은이들의 인터넷 사용이 사회변화에 미치는 영향 연구 - 쿠웨이트 가족관계의 변화를 중심으로

A Study on the Usage of Internet among the Kuwaiti Youth and Its Impacts on Social Change - focused on family relations in Kuwait -

&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Electronic self&quot; has emerged in the late 1990s as a result of spread and popular usage of the Internet among the Youth around the world. The electronic self is characterized as individualistic, creative, flexible, and expressive in the online cyber space where the existing values and customs are ignored.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The paper explores what impacts the usage of Internet among the youth in Kuwait has made on the social change, focusing on family relations. To achieve the goal, this paper has illuminated the following three points. First, for what purposes the current Kuwaiti youth are using Internet since the Internet has first introduced in Kuwait in 1992. Second, what impacts the emergence of the individualistic electronic self have made on the Kuwaiti society where the collective family culture has been traditionally valued over the individual. Third, what impacts the off-line socio-cultural values have made on the youth&quot;s online behaviors. The answers of the three points would reflect the correlations of the development of technology and social change.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;To acquire the data, the research relied on literature reviews of the previous works done in Kuwait and CMC (computer-mediatedcommunication) based online research from the period of December 2006 to March 2007. The participants of the online research includes each of three female and male Kuwait University students.