The Prevalence of Social Media Addiction among the Nursing Students: Original Research Article

Abstract

Aim: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of social media addiction among the students of a selected nursing college.

Methods: A univariant descriptive design was adopted for the study. The Internet Addiction Test (Young, 1998), a 20-item scale was used to measure the presence and severity of internet dependency among adolescents. A total of 110 nursing students were selected using purposive sampling technique.

Results: The findings of the study showed that a majority 42% of nursing students had moderate social media addiction, 30% nursing students had mild social media addiction, only 14% nursing students had severe social media addiction, and the remaining 14% had no social media addiction. Based on social media addiction scales scores, nursing students had maximum score of 89 with a mean 52.33%, mean score percentage 52.33%, and standard deviation 19.079. The association between social media addiction and the selected demographic variables showed that there was a statistically significant association found between the demographic variables such as duration of social media use, hours of use per day, and the total number of social media applications being used.

Conclusion: The result of the study showed that most of the students had moderate level of social media addiction whereas very less were shown severe level of social media addiction