110. Internet Addiction in Kuwait and Efforts to Control It

Internet Addiction has reached an epidemic level worldwide. Since the 1990’s the Internet has exploded to become an important part of our daily live. It was best described as a sword with two edges. On one side, it brought the whole world to our fingertips. On the other side, the excessive use of it can and will lead to a state of mental and psychological disorder, hence the term Internet Addiction Disorder IAD. Kuwait, a tiny nation in the Arab Gulf countries was the first in the area to shed some light on the problem in 2009 by conducting a public awareness campaign in the traditional media. Since then, the government, along with other organizations, started to take some measures to control this disorder without any success because most of the measures were restrictive in nature rather than positive. This paper will revisit the Internet addiction scene among university students in Kuwait after 8 years from publishing the first paper as measured by the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) to measure the level of awareness and percentage of highly addicted students compared to the early results, and describe the efforts taking place to control it at the government, organization, and family level.