Prevalence and patterns of internet addiction among medical students

Abstract

<b>Background:</b> There has been an explosive growth in the use of internet not only in India, but also worldwide in the last decade. There were about 42 million active internet users in urban India in 2008 when compared to 5 million in 2000. India now has the world's third-largest national digital population, with approximately, 120 million Internet users in 2011. <b>Aims:</b> The aim was to study prevalence and pattern of internet usage among medical students in Guntur. <b>Materials and Methods:</b> A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical students (<i>n</i> = 211) belonging to two medical colleges, to assess the pattern of internet usage. A semi-structured proforma along with Young's Internet Addiction scale was used. <b>Results:</b> Of 211 medical students, 57.2% were females and 42.8% were males. The users were divided into groups: 64.4% as average users, 11.8% as possible addicts, 0.4% as addicts, and in 23.2% of medical students internet usage was less than average user. Significant usage differences were evident based on the gender of user. Medical students used the internet mostly for social networking (59.7%), downloading media files (18.9%), online gaming (12.3%), and academic purposes (0.1%). About 63% of the medical students were using mobile phones to access the internet. <b>Conclusion:</b> Internet usage for the purpose of social networking (Facebook, WhatsApp, Mails etc.) was very high among the medical students. Availability of high speed internet on mobile phones may be the reason for spending more time on social network websites.