Take control or be controlled: a qualitative study about medical students’ standpoint on internet use

Authors

  • Rehana Khalil Department of Family & Community Medicine, Unaizah College of Medicine, Qassim University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20161358

Keywords:

Controlled, Control, Internet use, Medical students

Abstract

Background: Internet use has become an indispensable part of our daily life nowadays and is accessible in homes, schools, colleges, libraries and internet cafes; access is further aided with the increasing affordability of home computers and smart cell phones over the last decade. However, excessive Internet use can lead to negative outcomes such as poor school performance, social isolation, and might impede adolescent’s achievement of psychosocial developmental tasks. The balance is very important to maintain a healthy relationship with everything around us. For this equipoise the basic requirement is timely discernment.  The rationale behind choosing medical students for the study is the belief that they should have better perception of balance between physical activity and internet usage. The objective was to study the medical students’ view point and practice regarding internet use, and physical activity, and their knowledge of health problems related to excessive internet use.

Methods: Design of the study was semi-structured interviews with individual participants and Setting is one medical school in the Karachi, Pakistan. The study participants include 40 undergraduate medical students, across all stages of their training, selected by homogeneous purposive sampling, with the whole medical school population as a sampling frame.

Results: Based on medical students’ experiences and perceptions regarding internet use, the main findings included one forth12 (28%) of medical students prefer to see their friends in person while three forth of the participants either maintain their social circle through internet or visit them sometime. More than half of the sample, 23 (57%) respondents used Google search to update their knowledge and get information about certain topics to complete their academic tasks like course assignments. Two third of the sample either not interested in playing games or prefer to stay home. Almost half 21 (52%) sample used to do regular exercise either aerobics or with electrical or manual exercise machines while 9 (22%) go for daily walk. The gender differences in physical activity were not found to be significant. More than half 23 (57%) of the medical students either had no idea about health effects of excessive internet use or they denied any effect.

Conclusions:Medical students prefer socialization through internet and also utilizing it to accomplish a wide range of academic tasks like their course assignments. Medical schools generally promote a healthy lifestyle, and we expect medical students to be self-motivated to improve their health-related behaviors. However, based on the findings of current study, it can be safely recommended that there is a crucial need of improvement not only in edification of  health effects of excessive internet use but also in terms of attitude and practice of medical students for their pivotal role in setting exemplary behavior towards this momentous concern of the century.

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Published

2017-02-03

How to Cite

Khalil, R. (2017). Take control or be controlled: a qualitative study about medical students’ standpoint on internet use. International Journal Of Community Medicine And Public Health, 3(5), 1061–1068. https://doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20161358

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Original Research Articles