Medicina comunitaria y educación para la salud

Abstracto

Internet Addiction and Associated Factors among Health Sciences Students in Nepal

Marahatta SB, Adhikari B, Aryal N and Regmi R

Background:As people have accepted the digital revolution as a reality, the internet has been growing by leaps and bounds. The Internet though aids to serve various purposes; has failed to aided users to realize their rights and responsibilities being hounded by various externalities. Internet poses a lot of threats to human life. These include invasion of privacy, security breaches, breach of confidentiality, hacking, pornography, cyber bullying or exploitation and most recently excessively indulgence in internet browsing resulting in time wasting and Internet Addiction.
Objective:This study sought to determine the prevalence of Internet Addiction among and contributory factors and to determine internet related behavior patterns among students in Nepal.
Methods:This cross sectional study was conducted among 236 health Science students. Participants were selected through stratified random sampling method.
Results:Of 236 participants, 74.6% were females. The study revealed that 50.8% had mild addiction, 40.7% moderate and 1.3% had severe addiction. Speed of internet (χ²=8.547, df=3, p<0.05), amount of time spent per day (χ²=22.334, df=2, p<0.001) and watching sexually explicit contents (χ²=4.8000, df=1, p<0.05) were significantly different.
Conclusions:The study shows that the prevalence of internet addiction is significantly high. In order to address these emerging issue proper prompt and appropriate interventions should be taken and a governing body should be established to forestall possible impact of Internet addiction on students.