Relationship between internet addiction and academic performance of undergraduate medical students of Azad Kashmir

Abstract

Objective: To assess the relationship between internet addiction (IA) and academic performance among the medical students of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan.
 Methods: A cross-sectional study was done involving 316 medical students of Poonch Medical College, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan from May 2018 to November 2018. Dr. Young’s Internet Addiction Test questionnaire was used as the tool of data collection. The questionnaire contained twenty 5-points Likert scale questions to assess internet addiction. IA score was calculated and the association between IA and academic performance was observed by Spearman Rank Correlation test. Relationship between baseline characteristics of the medical students and IA was also seen.
 Results: Eighty-nine (28.2%) medical students fell under the category of ‘severe addiction’ and most importantly only 3 (0.9%) were not internet addicted according to Dr. Young’s questionnaire. Internet addicted medical students scored significantly poor in their exams (p. <.001). One hundred thirty one (41.4%) students with a median IA score of 45 scored in the range of 61-70% marks as compared to 3 (0.9%) students with a median IA score of 5, secured greater than 80% marks.
 Conclusion: This study and many other previous studies have revealed that internet addiction affects academic performance. The number of internet users is ever increasing therefore, the number of internet misusers will also increase. If no step is taken to control internet addiction, it may cause a serious impact in the future.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.2.1061
 How to cite this:Javaeed A, Jeelani R, Gulab S, Ghauri SK. Relationship between internet addiction and academic performance of undergraduate medical students of Azad Kashmir. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(2):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.2.1061
 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Emotinal intelligence, perceived stress, and internet use behaviour among undergraduate medical students - a cross sectional study

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“…Chaudhari B. et al in their sample, identified 51.42% and 7.45% of medicos with mild and moderate addiction respectively. 13 None of our study participants had severe internet addiction as per IAT, whereas 28.2% showed scores corresponding to severe internet addiction in a study by Javaeed A, Jeelani R et al 23 The same study showed only 0.9% of participants scored below 30 in IAT. In comparison, our study has 34.2% of participants with scores indicating no internet addiction.…”

“…Female predominance among the respondents is noticed in a recent similar study population too. 23 The study also showed that social networking was the most frequently accessed content online by both genders. Less than 33% played online games in the current study.…”

Association between Internet Use Behavior and Palpitation among Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study of Middle School Children from Northwest Romania

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