Internet Addiction in the Students of Semnan University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Introduction: The ever-increasing advancements on the World Wide Web and the countless increase in its users, especially among the university students, caused many problems. The internet addiction in the students is one of the significant problems which can have adverse effect on their health as well as their academic performance. Therefore, we intended to study the internet addiction among the students of the Semnan University of Medical Sciences.
Methods: 260 students of the Semnan University of Medical Sciences were randomly sampled and entered into this descriptive-analytical study. The Young's standard questionnaire was used to collect the data and its reliability and validity were confirmed. We have used SPSS 18.0 software to analyze the data. The significance level was considered 5% (p-value).
Findings: The analysis of the results showed that the internet addiction among the students participating in the study was as follows: 6% without internet addiction, 68% mild internet addiction and 31.6% moderate internet addiction.  The internet addiction in the male students has been significantly higher than the female ones. The results analysis has also indicated that there is a significant and direct relationship between the hours of internet use and the extent of the addiction.
Conclusions: Regarding the fact that most of the students in the present study have shown mild internet addiction; then we can hope with a proper planning which will provide the conditions, the students will use the internet more in research and science fields and thus wasting their precious time will be avoided.