Reading Log 3: Response to Internet Paper

Krystyn Davis

3/11/10

Billy Middleton

“Internet Use and Its Relationship to Loneliness” is a scientific paper written by Eric J. Moody. The paper reports the procedures and results of a scientific experiment that Moody and others conducted about how the Internet affects people’s social and emotional lives. Moody ultimately came to the conclusion that the Internet causes higher rates of emotional loneliness and lower rates of social loneliness.

Moody probably wrote this article to a wide audience. He could have written it for his colleagues and/or peers of psychology at the university he was attending in order to inform them of the psychological effects of the Internet on people. He could have also meant for the audience to be people who use the Internet frequently, to warn them of the effects it can have on their emotional well being.

As I mentioned earlier, this paper is in the format of a scientific report. It consists of the following subheadings/sections: summary, introduction, method, results, and discussion. The discussion and introduction sections have citations, and the results section includes the results of the actual experiment/survey he conducted. The fact that this paper has citations and actual numerical results/evidence makes the argument much more convincing because it is hard to argue with numbers and the fact that many other people might have agreed with Moody's hypothesis and opinions.

Overall, I agree mostly with the author when he argues that the Internet can cause emotional loneliness, because if you are all alone all of the time, even if you are talking to someone online, it is not the same as actually physically being with someone. You could be socially popular on the internet but hardly know anyone in the real world because you hardly ever get out of the house. However, even if I didn’t agree with Moody’s argument, the fact that he did this experiment/survey would help persuade me to agree with him because it is very hard to argue with the results of actual experiments and surveys.