A cross sectional study on internet addiction among students of KMCT integrated campus

A cross sectional study on internet addiction among students of KMCT integrated campus Mohandas B.1, T Pawar A.2*, John A.3, Kumar K. D.4, Sujesh P.K.5 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17511/ijphr.2019.i1.03 1 Bindu Mohandas, Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine, KMCT Medical College, Calicut, Kerala, India. 2* Anant T Pawar, Professor and HOD, Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, India. 3 Annie John, Professor and HOD, Department of Community Medicine, KMCT Medical College, Calicut, Kerala, India. 4 Durgesh Kumar K., Statistician, Department of Community Medicine, KMCT Medical College, Calicut, Kerala, India. 5 Sujesh P.K., Medico-social worker, Department of Community Medicine, KMCT Medical College, Calicut, Kerala, India.

Davis preferred the term "pathological internet use" (PIU) over internet addiction as addiction term mainly refers to dependency onpsychoactive substances. Scott Caplan suggested replacing the term "pathological internet use" with "problematic internet use" which is widely used allover now. A total of 390 students from these four colleges were selected by simple random sampling technique. Of the total 390 students included in study, around 28 students could not be included in the study as they were not Internet users, and 31 submitted incomplete forms. Thus, a total of 331 students were finally included in the study. Chi-square test was used for analyzing categorical variables. P-value < 0.05 was considered as significant.
Scoring system: Prevalence of internet addiction was determined based on total score of YIAT.
Internet use was divided into four categories normal range :<20 points, mild: 20-49 points, moderate: 50-79 points, and severe: 80-100 points Ethical consideration and permission: The study was conducted after obtaining the approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee and permission was sought from the college authorities of all the colleges.

Results
The mean age of the study participants was 20.25±1.3SD. Among them 48.3% were males and 51.7% were females.The mean age ofcomputer use and internet use was 10.01 ± 3.55 years and 6.61  Table 1.  14.5% (47/331) of the students said that they visit various sites on internet when they get time in between lecture classes and 7.1% (23/331) of them agreed that they visit different sites during an ongoing lecture. were moderately addicted and none in the category of severe addiction ( Table 3). Prevalence of internet addiction was 77.6% in mild users and 18.4% in moderate users (Table 4). The most common device used to access the internet was smart phones (94.86%) in this study.
There was a significant difference (p=0.027) present between students of various professional Courses in being addicted to the Internet.
Significant relationship was also found between time spent on using internet per day and internet addiction (p=0.022) in our study.
The study of internet addiction among professional course students by Sharma A et al, only 46.5% students used smart phones to access internet. Also they found there was a significant difference present between students of various courses in being addicted to the Internet (p=0.010).
Significant relationship was also found between time spent on using internet per day and internet addiction (p=0.000) in their study [10].
Heterogeneous representation of college students and their systematic method in selection of samples tried to avoid bias in our study as participants were recruited from colleges with different academic settings.
However, recall bias could not be ruled out because it was a cross sectional study and participants were asked to report details of past exposure to use of internet; also they were self reporting and might have responded in such a way as to showthemselves in a good light.

Conclusion
In the last decade, internet has become an integral part of our life. The results highlight the vulnerability of professional college students to internet addiction. Prevalence of internet addiction using Young's internet addiction test is 77.64% in mild usersand 15.64% in moderate users.
Duration of internet use plays an important role in developing internet addiction. Internet is increasing and internet addiction seems to rise in future.
Awareness should be created among the students to improve ability to reduce the occurrence of internet addictionbehaviour promoting their healthy growth.