Jeddah's Wired Generation

This is a research project that I didn't pursue for my university course because of its complexity and size. The writing isn't very academic at all, which is why I scratched it; I'd rather it be more intimate than a formal research paper.

If you're interested in taking this research on, update me (for my curiosity) and do not use this text unless cited.

SUGGESTIONS? Don't be shy! Email me.

     Girls of Riyadh would seem to have nothing to do with Jeddah's youth and their interaction with the World Wide Web. After being distributed as a book in the Middle East, it was made clear one, in particular a girl of marital age, could get emotionally attached to something so relevant and familiar. Originally a set of emails that were mass-delivered chapter by chapter on a weekly basis, the sensitive topics covered represented average Generation Y* girls in Saudi Arabia facing adopted and inherited cultures. While these represented people were on the brink of higher education and adulthood, their younger siblings most probably shared a CRT monitor's warm glow and a modem's recent dial-up connection to turn to in times of leisure.

     Their culture was a whirl of change and world away from their parents' with dilemmas of adopted and inherited identities. The males pride themselves on not allowing anyone to utter their mother's name while girls are making names for themselves. Factors such as international pressure to adopt globalized commercial values and studying abroad plays a role and is understood using other regions, but what other influences have not been surfaced?

     At this very moment, two indisputable facts are ingrained in anyone following Middle Eastern news: the youth are web-savvy and a source of change, and they outnumber the former generation. The youth of the region are now being portrayed to be a massive unified swarm with its own language and culture. The region's stereotypes are rarely too fictitious and is, in fact, based on a distinct society whose Saudi chapter rose in 1999 with the Internet's availability. This paper aims to describe Jeddah's present youth culture and investigate how the Internet has shaped it to become the phenomenon never before seen. Subjects will be chosen based on their breadth of web culture terminology and then placed in categories coined by the online community such as, but not limited to, "gamers", "bloggers", and "hackers". The informants will then relay first-hand accounts of their own history with the Internet in Jeddah.

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* Following Generation X and is also known as the Net Generation