Evaluation of internet addiction and its related factors in the students of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, 2015

Internet is one of the world's most popular social media that addiction to it, is rapidly increasing. This study aimed to determine the level of internet addiction and its related factors among students of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences. This cross-sectional study was conducted in the first semester of 2015. 384 students of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences were selected. For data sampling, cluster sampling method was used. Each college was considered as a cluster. Samples from each college were selected randomly. The tool of data collection was a standard questionnaire. The first part of the questionnaire, were demographic questions and the second part of it was the main questions about determination of prevalence of internet addiction. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS version 21and descriptive and analytical statistics formula. 95.1% of the students have filled and returned the questionnaires. The findings of the study showed that 17 students (4.7%) did not have any dependency to Internet. 238 (65.2%) of them had slight dependency, 94 (25.8%) had moderate dependency and 16 (4.4%) of them had severe dependency. There is a significant relationship between internet addiction and gender (p=0.002), marital status (p=0.04), habitat (p=0.02) and having a personal computer (p=0.03). Due to the high level of mild addiction to internet, Workshops on the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet and next implications of internet dependency for the academic students is suggested.