Arab Educational Information Network

This study was conducted to test several hypotheses concerning different types of loneliness, the social and emotional loneliness, with the latter including two aspects: the family loneliness and the romantic loneliness, and their relation to the level of addiction to the internet. a convenient sample of 150 Lebanese college students were administered a survey measuring their type of loneliness, through a short form of the social and emotional loneliness scale for adults (SELSA-S), and their level of addiction to internet, through the internet addiction diagnostic questionnaire (IADQ) and the internet addiction test (IAT). The results showed a significant positive correlation between emotional, family, and social loneliness and the level of internet addiction. Moreover, the correlation between emotional loneliness and level of addiction to internet was marginal but in the predicted direction. Regression analysis showed that family loneliness had a bigger weight in explaining the variance on IADQ scores. Three analyses of variance showed a significant mean difference between the three IAT groups of internet addicts on emotional, family and social loneliness and marginal significance between these groups on emotional loneliness. Furthermore, the mean difference was between the normal and moderate groups. Further analysis showed that the moderate group of internet addicts spends more hours using Whatsapp and Facebook. (Author's Abstract)