Internet addiction and its correlates among undergraduate students of health sciences in coastal Karnataka: A cross-sectional study

Internet has become the most important part of everyone's life, especially the youth who are found to be dependent on it for various reasons, which is a direct effect of rapid expansion of technology around the globe. The present study was conducted to assess the magnitude of internet addiction among undergraduate students of health sciences of coastal Karnataka and to find the risk factors for internet addiction among undergraduate students of health sciences of coastal Karnataka. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1300 students of a private university of coastal Karnataka. A pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Young's Internet addiction test and depression, anxiety and stresstest. Descriptive statistics were reported, and Chi-square test was used to assess the relationship between expected outcomes. Out of these 884 (68%) were females and 416 (32%) were males. Among the 1300 participants, 1118 (86%) were normal users, 156 (12%) had mild addiction, 26 (2%) had moderate to severe addiction. Internet addiction was significantly associated with factors such as availability of own personal gadgets (P < 0.001), use of smartphone (P < 0.001), exposure to internet at a very young age, internet usage for the purpose of exploring new things and building new relationships online and frequency of internet usage for more than 2-3 h/day. The study also identified a significant association of internet addiction with mother's education and father's occupation. With increase in internet addiction, there was subsequent increase in the level of depression, anxiety, and stress. Although internet is considered as a boon to the mankind as it helps us to connect to the entire globe and also everyone is compelled to use it for various purpose, however, we need to know what is the optimum level of usage, beyond which its use can be addictive and can hinder our activities of daily living.