Abstract

Background: Sixty-three percent of the world population uses the Internet and 58% use social media. Internet addiction or social media addiction is an impulse disorder marked by excessive or poorly regulated pre-occupations, desires, or behaviors. Teenagers and young age students are more prone to social media addiction as they spend more time on smartphones.

Aims and Objectives: The present study was conducted to detect social media addiction and its impact on the physical and mental health of students.

Materials and Methods: The study was done in four medical and paramedical colleges with 720 students divided equally in all four colleges and further in each year. A novel social media addiction scale was used for derived from Young’s Internet addiction scale to assess social media addiction. Data were collected in the GitHub tool. A Chi-square test and univariate logistic regression were used to analyze the data.

Results: 37.5% of the study participants were social media addicted. Medical students were more addicted as compared to paramedical. Physical and mental health problems were seen more in social media addicts as compared to non-addicts. Behavioral changes were seen more in social media addicts.

Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of social media addiction in medical and paramedical students. Proper steps need to be taken to counteract this growing problem at an early stage.

Key words: Internet Addiction; Medical and Paramedical Students; Mental Health; Physical Health; Social Media Addiction