Effect of Social Media Applications on Kuwaiti Teenagers: An Empirical Study

Teenagers in Kuwait and elsewhere spend a lot of their time using various types of social media applications (SMA). This study surveyed Kuwaiti teenagers, males and females at different educational levels, the usage intensity, purpose of use of these applications and quantitatively assessed the effect it has on many dimensions of their life. Many interesting results are highlighted and can be extrapolated to teens in the Arab World and beyond. The most outstanding results are that Kuwait teenagers spend a lot of time using social media applications, use WhatsApp and Snapchat in particular for communicating with others and for entertainment, it has negatively affected their sleeping hours, consider it a very useful learning resource, by in large trust the information received on social media, do not seem to be over concerned about how it affects their privacy, use it quite often to buy products and services, and they are satisfied with such purchases. To achieve these goals, a special questionnaire has been prepared especially for this purpose has been met from a random sample of Kuwait teens from different schools in Kuwait. Appropriate statistical analysis tools were used in this study.