A study on the usage of Social Media and the level of Social Media Addiction among undergraduates of Faculty of Health Care Sciences, Eastern University, Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Social media is at the forefront of digital technology, embedded as a facet of modern-day life. Checking and scrolling through social media has become an increasingly popular activity over the last decade. According to the recent statistics, there were 8.20 million social media users in Sri Lanka in January 2022. Although the majority of peoples’ use of social media is non-problematic, there is a small percentage of users, especially students become addicted to social networking sites and engage in excessive or compulsive use. Thus, considering the key role of students in promoting the quality of physical and mental health of the society, the present study aims to investigate the usage purpose of social media and the level of addiction among undergraduates of Faculty of Health-Care Sciences (FHCS), Eastern University, Sri Lanka. A cross sectional descriptive study was conducted among all internal undergraduate students of both BSc Nursing and MBBS courses of Faculty of Health- Care Sciences, Eastern University, Sri Lanka during September to November 2022. Pretested, self- administered online questionnaire was used to collect data with the written consent of the participants. An open access Social Networking Addiction Scale was used to analyze the level of social media addiction. There were 449 students (Female 68.4% and Male 31.6%) participated in the survey. The findings of the present study reveals that all the responders were social media users (100%). WhatsApp, You Tube, Face book and Instagram were found to be the mostly used social media network respectively, whereas Viber, Pinterest, Tweeter were the least usage. Most common reason for social media was being updated and socialization, gathering information and educational purposes. According to the results obtained in the study, approximately 52% of the students of FHCS are addicted to various social media platform. Female students were more addicted than male students are and among them, majority were mildly addicted to social media. Therefore, need further studies on association between social media usage and academic performances and health issues among the students.