Raising awareness and knowledge regarding gadget addiction during COVID-19 pandemic through webinar

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the public health sector and has impacted various sectors such as politics, education, economy, and socio-culture. As of 24 July 2021, there have been 3,127,826 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia. Large-scale social restrictions, stay at home, online learning, and work from home have led people to change their ways of life. These may increase the duration and the need to use the gadget and may lead to addiction. We conduct a webinar to increase public knowledge and awareness regarding gadget addiction during the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to maintain general well-being. This study examines webinar participants' knowledge before and after the webinar. The participants were asked to fill a pre-test and a post-test. Thus the results were statistically examined to determine the knowledge difference before and after the webinar. The demographic data shows the webinar participants were dominated by female participants, people aged 17-25 years old, and high school graduates. The participants that are included in this study are 265. There is an increase and significant difference (p<0.05) between pre and post-test scores evaluated by Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The number of participants with low-level knowledge is reduced from 52 to 42 after the webinar. In conclusion, there is an increase in knowledge about gadget addiction in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic after the webinar based on the pre-test and post-test data. Thus, education through a webinar can be applied to increase the knowledge regarding gadget addiction during the COVID-19 pandemic.