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Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Internet addiction is one of the fast-growing addictive behaviors and is a significant public health problem affecting a large number of people worldwide. Excessive use of the internet among university students increases their risk of internet addiction and related negative consequences....

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Autores principales: Mboya, Innocent B., Leyaro, Beatrice John, Kongo, Alberto, Mkombe, Charles, Kyando, Eliah, George, Johnston
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7346421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32646491
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00439-9
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author Mboya, Innocent B.
Leyaro, Beatrice John
Kongo, Alberto
Mkombe, Charles
Kyando, Eliah
George, Johnston
author_facet Mboya, Innocent B.
Leyaro, Beatrice John
Kongo, Alberto
Mkombe, Charles
Kyando, Eliah
George, Johnston
author_sort Mboya, Innocent B.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Internet addiction is one of the fast-growing addictive behaviors and is a significant public health problem affecting a large number of people worldwide. Excessive use of the internet among university students increases their risk of internet addiction and related negative consequences. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and factors associated with internet addiction among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College (KCMUCo) from May to June 2018. A total of 500 consenting undergraduate students were sampled using the Simple Random Sampling technique proportional to the size of each class and a self-administered questionnaire used to collect data. Internet addiction was measured using a 20-item internet addiction test (IAT-20). Generalized linear model with Poisson family and log link function was used to estimate prevalence ratio (PR) and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for factors associated with internet addiction. RESULTS: The prevalence of internet addiction was 31%. Undergraduate students using the internet at the college were less likely to be addicted to internet (PR = 0.45, 95%CI 0.23, 0.86, p = 0.02) compared to those using both at the hostel/home and college. Higher prevalence of internet addiction was among those who used internet for a long time, i.e., 5 h or more per day (PR = 1.84, 95%CI 1.30, 2.63, p = 0.001) and for social networking (PR = 1.64, 95%CI 1.17, 2.31, p = 0.004) compared to those who used for less than 5 h per day and academic purposes, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Thirty-one percent of undergraduate students in northern Tanzania were addicted to the internet. Internet addiction was associated with using the internet at the college, a long time using the internet per day, and social networking. The college administration should put effort into improving the accessibility, reliability, and regulation of college internet services to promote learning and academic productivity. We also recommend awareness creation intervention about the harmful consequences of excessive internet use in this population. More studies are needed to determine the burden of mental, psychological, and social problems associated with internet addiction in high-risk populations, and associated consequences.
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spelling pubmed-73464212020-07-14 Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study Mboya, Innocent B. Leyaro, Beatrice John Kongo, Alberto Mkombe, Charles Kyando, Eliah George, Johnston BMC Psychol Research Article BACKGROUND: Internet addiction is one of the fast-growing addictive behaviors and is a significant public health problem affecting a large number of people worldwide. Excessive use of the internet among university students increases their risk of internet addiction and related negative consequences. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and factors associated with internet addiction among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College (KCMUCo) from May to June 2018. A total of 500 consenting undergraduate students were sampled using the Simple Random Sampling technique proportional to the size of each class and a self-administered questionnaire used to collect data. Internet addiction was measured using a 20-item internet addiction test (IAT-20). Generalized linear model with Poisson family and log link function was used to estimate prevalence ratio (PR) and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for factors associated with internet addiction. RESULTS: The prevalence of internet addiction was 31%. Undergraduate students using the internet at the college were less likely to be addicted to internet (PR = 0.45, 95%CI 0.23, 0.86, p = 0.02) compared to those using both at the hostel/home and college. Higher prevalence of internet addiction was among those who used internet for a long time, i.e., 5 h or more per day (PR = 1.84, 95%CI 1.30, 2.63, p = 0.001) and for social networking (PR = 1.64, 95%CI 1.17, 2.31, p = 0.004) compared to those who used for less than 5 h per day and academic purposes, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Thirty-one percent of undergraduate students in northern Tanzania were addicted to the internet. Internet addiction was associated with using the internet at the college, a long time using the internet per day, and social networking. The college administration should put effort into improving the accessibility, reliability, and regulation of college internet services to promote learning and academic productivity. We also recommend awareness creation intervention about the harmful consequences of excessive internet use in this population. More studies are needed to determine the burden of mental, psychological, and social problems associated with internet addiction in high-risk populations, and associated consequences. BioMed Central 2020-07-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7346421/ /pubmed/32646491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00439-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mboya, Innocent B.
Leyaro, Beatrice John
Kongo, Alberto
Mkombe, Charles
Kyando, Eliah
George, Johnston
Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
title Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
title_full Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
title_short Internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
title_sort internet addiction and associated factors among medical and allied health sciences students in northern tanzania: a cross-sectional study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7346421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32646491
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00439-9
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