RIYADH, 19 July 2004 — The searing summer heat in the Kingdom encourages people to turn night into day. But opportunities for diversion are limited. Socializing with friends at cafes and restaurants or playing sports and exercising occupy some. Others are content with cruising the streets in their cars, stopping occasionally for food or coffee.

Recently a new craze has taken teenagers by storm and is occupying a good portion of their day: Internet chatting. Increasing numbers are turning to Internet cafes for entertainment. A recent survey indicated that 83 percent of Internet users check their e-mail and surf for sites of interest such as cars or sports. Mainly they chat and try to attract girls. The balance tends to check e-mail, read the news, play games and read up on topics they find interesting.

Internet cafes have mushroomed in many neighborhoods in Riyadh, decorated in a modern “techno” style to attract the young. Teenagers pour into cafes from Maghrib until the early hours of the morning. The positive aspect is that they are keeping the young occupied and off the streets.

There is a negative side. Keeping the young off the streets is one thing. The question is, what are they are doing in the cafes all night? The answer is not a pleasant one. Apart from checking their e-mails, they are chatting, looking for adult sites and generally surfing for culturally unacceptable sites.

For most of the clients, the Internet cafes are a way to while away time during the summer. For others, however, it has become an obsession they must satisfy.

“I come to this cafe because there is not much else to do,” said Talal, a frequent surfer. “All my friends are on holiday and I am here by myself.” He spends between five and 10 hours a day online. “I have joined a chat community, not just for fun but to learn about the way people live in other countries.”

“I spend about seven hours a day on average,” Bandar, another regular, said. “I have a system, I log on and check my mail, then I catch up with the news to see what’s going on then I log into a chat site and spend the rest of the day chatting and checking out music, cars and sports.” He admitted that his aim in the chatrooms was to charm girls.

Not all people chat just for girls. Ali Al-Shagroon, a 22-year-old student of medicine, said: “When I go online I check my e-mail just like everyone else. Then I spend the rest of my time surfing through news and Islamic sites.”

Many of the more IT proficient surfers have found ways to access some of the prohibited adult sites. One spoke to us freely on the condition of anonymity.

“The way to get around the firewalls is to avoid going directly to the site itself,” he said. His technique was to join groups through MSN or Yahoo and access the appropriate category.

Other users said that a way to gain access to prohibited sites is to change the proxy settings on the computers. They search online for proxies that have not yet been blocked and use them to open up the forbidden sites.

Internet cafe owners were asked if they were aware of this problem and whether or not they are taking measures to prevent such sites from being accessed.

Ahmed Q., who recently opened an Internet cafe, said: “It is not my job to do anything about it. The government is trying to block out as many of these sites as they can. However, boys will be boys. I cannot go around disciplining them.”

Otaibi, another cafe owner, said: “It is not my business to tell people what they can and can not do online, nor is it for me to discipline or teach these youths anything.”

Fahd Al-Garawoi, owner of Sawaleef cafe, told us that of the customers who used his cafe are decent people and avoid such sites. “However, there are the few bad apples. I have installed a program that will not allow a user to change the proxy settings of the computer.”

The issue of Internet cafes is a cultural dilemma. They keep the young off the streets, but is what they do online worth keeping them off the streets for? The bored young will always try to find some new form of entertainment. Sometimes, the rest of society disapproves, but offers no real alternative.