ABSTRACT

The Internet has certainly come a long way since the humble beginnings, having morphed into a tool for person-to-person communication, a mass medium, and a giant global library. Early research on the Internet was specifically concerned with the effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on individuals and their relationships. In the US, anti-miscegenation laws created to enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships criminalized interracial marriages and, in some cases, sex between members of different races. In the mid-1960s, the companionate era was replaced by the self-expressive era of marriage, which continues to characterize marriages in the 21st century. It was the result of a number of forces. The civil rights and feminist movements along with the embrace of humanistic psychology converged to create a climate that emphasized self-discovery and self-expression and put marriage in charge of fulfilling needs related to self-esteem and personal growth.