Abstract

Mobile phone is considered as an important communication tool and has become the integral part of the society. Increased usage of smart phones creates addiction to it, which is associated with social and psychological disturbances. Objectives: This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of Smartphone addiction and to assess pattern of use of Smartphone and its association with smartphone addiction among medical students. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted among 510 medical students. A pre-designed, pre-tested structured questionnaire containing the short-version of the smart phone addiction scale (SAS-SV) was used for data collection. Data is presented in percentages and association was tested using Chi-square. Results: Prevalence of smartphone addiction was found to be 32.4%. The most personally relevant smart phone function reported was social-media usage followed by followed by phone calls and watching videos. Students using smartphones on an average of 3-4 hours/day and >5 hours/day are more likely to be addicted to smartphones compared to the students’ using smartphones on an average of 11-60 mins/day. Conclusions: Prevalence of smartphone addiction was quite high amongst the medical students which indicates smartphone addiction as a public health issue. As such, awareness regarding this upcoming problem amongst students has to be raised.

Description