Social media addiction and depression during healthcare professional education at Eastern University, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Background: In recent years social media has become a significant asset of students’ life. Their life now relies on social media to interact with each other. Addiction to social media is a behavioural addiction characterized by being excessively concerned on social media, driven by an uncontrolled urge to use it that impairs the users’ behaviour pattern. Depression is a depressive disorder characterized by sadness, loss of pleasure, feeling of guilty, disturbed sleep or lack of appetite. Evidences suggest that using social media can adversely affect its user’s mental health, mainly the young generation. Objective: This study aimed to find out the most used social media platform, the level of social media addiction and the relationship between social media addiction and depression among the undergraduates of Faculty of Health-Care Sciences (FHCS), Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL). Methodology: A self-administered online questionnaire was used to collect the data after the pilot study. Addiction level was assessed by using “Social Networking Addiction scale”. The relationship between social media addiction and depression among participants was analyzed by using Pearson Chi Square test. Results This study shows that though the most used platform was WhatsApp (23.8%), majority of the students were not addicted to social media. This study also revealed that there is a high prevalence of depression among undergraduates and there is a positive linear correlation between social media addiction and depression (Pearson Correlation=+0.482) among the undergraduates of FHCS, EUSL. Conclusion: Most used platform was WhatsApp and this study shows positive linear correlation between social media addiction and depression.