Pattern of Internet Usage and Addiction among Private Medical Colleges Students in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Abstract

Internet addiction specifies to the extreme use of the internet which sequentially causes problems in relationship, health and professional aspects. The current study attempted to find out the pattern of internet use and internet addiction-related behaviour among the students of private medical colleges in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. A cross-sectional study was executed in three private medical colleges in Dhaka city. A total of 350 medical students were recruited as study participants by employing a simple random sampling technique. Data was collected through a self-administered semi-structured questionnaire on sociodemographic and internet use related activities. Internet addiction-related data were collected by using Young’s Internet Addiction Test (IAT) Scale. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 20). Descriptive and inferential statistics using the Chi-square test was conducted. P-value <0.05 was considered as significant. The findings show that 73.7% of study participants were female and the rest were male, with a mean age of 21.1 years. The percentage of students used the internet more than 10 times per day was 37.4% followed by 5 – 10 times per day which was 35.1% and less than five times per day with 27.4% students. A total of 44.3% students reported that they spent 1 – 3 hours per day for internet usage followed by 37.7% use 4 – 8 hours per day and 18% reported more than 8 hours per day. A total of 43.7% of students mentioned that they used the internet for entertainment, while 40%, 9.7% and 6.6% reported for time passing, social networking, and academic purposes respectively. Overall, 76.9% of students had internet addiction either in any form, 62.6% had moderate internet addiction or problem use, or 14.3% had severe internet addiction. This study concludes that the characteristics of internet use among this population are diverse and the prevalence of internet addiction found to be considerably higher compared to other Asian countries.