ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of the Internet in friendships, including those that develop into love and marriage and deals with the immediate spaces in which Internet use and relationships take place, using as examples of cybercafes and of Internet use amongst schoolchildren. Prior to the arrival of the Internet, the family was indeed under threat as the core institution of social life in Trinidad. In contrast to family relationships, friendships, acquaintances, and chat partners point to less well-defined relationships that can be more ambiguous when pursued online. Two places of sociality that brought out quite different possibilities for relationships were cybercafes and secondary schools. In so far as Internet studies have shifted their gaze from what happens online, they have started to investigate the microsociological contexts of Internet use, such as cybercafes or domestic spaces. The chapter concludes the Caribbean family is highly distinctive, as is indicated by the anthropological literature.
