Internet Addiction and Modeling its Risk Factors in Medical Students, Iran

BACKGROUND: Today's internet is a usual and common method for identifying and fulfilling unknown practices. Internet network has been prepared rapid and comfortable access to information. Internet addiction is a new and attractive subject that has been regarded as behavior-based addiction recently. PURPOSE: To estimate the prevalence of internet addiction and some of the related factors among medical students, Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted on 426 students selected through two-stage sampling method. Yang standard internet addiction questionnaire was used for data collection. After data entry, χ(2), t-test, and Pearson coefficient statistical tests were applied. 0.05 was considered as the significance level. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of internet addiction was 10.8%, with moderate and severe internet addiction equal to 8% and 2.8%, respectively. Mean and standard deviation of Yang internet addiction score was calculated as 32.74±14.52. Internet addiction was associated with sex, marital status, father's job, rate of knowledge about computer and internet, and educational level (P<0.05). But it was not associated with the parents’ education, residential area, field of study and level, and school of education (P>0.05). CONCLUSION: Because internet addiction leads to wasting of the students’ leisure time and also useful time, it affects the educational situation inversely. Some measures should be taken to plan and improve the use of internet.