Assessment of addiction to internet, smartphone and social networks among students of medical sciences: a cross sectional study

Abstract

Objective: Rapid development and prevalent use of smartphone, social networks, and the Internet variously affect the interactions, communications and health of the users. Hereupon, the objective of present study is to determine the overuse of smartphone and addiction to the Internet and social networks among the students of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2017. Materials and Methods: This descriptive analytical study was conducted in 2017. Firstly, 350 students from Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences were selected through a randomly clustered method as the sample size. Then the participants filled out the questionnaire about Internet addiction and overuse of smartphone and social networks. Finally, the data were analyzed by SPSS 19software and the results were presented in descriptive and analytical tables. Results: 321 questionnaires were completely filled out and they were handed over (91.7%). The mean score of Internet addiction was 40.05±20.69 while 19.6% of students did not have Internet addiction. The mild, moderate and severe Internet addictions were 48.6%, 24.6% and 7.2% respectively. Overuse of cellphone was determined51.96±18.55. Low, normal, and excessive uses of cell phone were respectively 9% ،75.4%and 15.6%. The addiction to social networks in cell phones of participants was 30.79±10.57. The rates of normal users, those who were exposed to the addiction and addicted users to social network were 36.4%, 53.9% and 9.7% respectively. There was a significant relationship between Internet and social networks addiction and overuse of smartphone (P = 0.001). Conclusion: Given the results of this study, students are exposed to the risks and complications of these technologies. Thus, it is essential to have some fruitful programs and strategies to promote students' knowledge and awareness about using the Internet, social networks and smartphone.

Predictive Relationships Among Smartphone Addiction, Fear of Missing Out and Interaction Anxiousness

“…Individuals experiencing high levels of FoMO are likely to suffer from problematic smartphone usage and emotional control (Wolniewicz, Tiamiyu, Weeks & Elhai, 2018). In addition, there is a significant relationship between addiction to the internet and social networks and the excessive usage of the smartphones (Mohammadi et al, 2018). Most smartphone users utilize the internet at high levels (Kawabe, Horiuchi, Ochi, Oka & Uenno, 2016).…”

Smartphone Addiction among Nursing and Health Students

“…Previous research has examined excessive smartphone use among nursing and health students. The review findings indicated that studies have been conducted in Spain (Aguilera-Manrique et al, 2018;Gutiérrez-Puertas et al, 2019), Pakistan (Javaid et al, 2019), Saudi Arabia (Alhazmi et al, 2018;Alkhateeb et al, 2020;Venkatesh et al, 2016), Iran (Miri et al, 2019;Mohammadi et al, 2018), Oman (Siddiqi et al, 2017), India (Bartwal & Nath, 2020;Basu et al, 2018;Dhamija et al, 2021;Jahagirdar et al, 2021), Thailand (Boonluksiri, 2018;Tangmunkongvorakul et al, 2019), Turkey (Cerit et al, 2018), China (Chen et al, 2017;Song et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2022), the United States (Brubaker & Beverly, 2020), South Korea (Sok et al, 2019), Malaysia (Lei et al, 2020), and Indonesia (Hanafi et al, 2019). The studies' samples included students of medicine, dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, and other health sciences.…”

“…The most widely used instrument to assess smartphone addiction in the review was the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS). Mohammadi et al (2018) reported that smartphone use among most students was regular, with only 15.6% having high or excessive rates of use. Basu et al (2018) also reported that 93.6% of the Indian medical students in the study were smartphone users, and 39.9% were addicted to smartphones.…”

Adjustment Estimation and Validation of the Addiction to Social Networks Scale Using the SEM Methodology

“…On the subject of SNA, some studies have reported interesting findings; such is the case of [8] who identified the existence of SNA in college students of the Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. In their findings, they report that 36.4% of the students are not considered addicted, 53.9% about to become addicted, and 9.7% were addicted to SN.…”