Study of Medical Students and Internet Usage

The Internet provides an opportunity for anyone to interact with whole of the world without any boundaries and barriers. Just think of friends and family members, to search any topic one can imagine, and to explore the world while sitting in the comfort of their own home or moving around by either desktops, laptops, or by smart phones. The popular media suggests that Internet usage decreases the amount of social interaction individuals have with the world outside of their computer and may be accompanied by social anxiety, loneliness, lowered self-esteem, or chronic depression, and the psychological dependence, literature’s mixed findings on this issue and topic have not given any clear inference rather a confusion like state is being created about its usage or effects on individual and society. This study looked at the impact that Internet usage has on an individual’s psychological well-being in an effort to clarify and expand on the previous researches and their outcome. Participants in this study were undergraduates’ medical student of different medical college using internet as a routine for their studies, social media and interacting with society. This study investigated three primary areas in addressing the disparate portrayals of the effect of Internet based social interactions among youth : 1) Can the amount of time spent and the level of social interaction for which a person uses the Internet predicts loneliness, level of social interaction, and social anxiety in offline settings/face-to-face relationships, and loneliness and social anxiety in online relationships; 2) Can the amount of time spent the Internet, or the amount of social interaction engaged in online predict participants reported levels of depression; and 3) Does the gender of the participant makes any difference on the amount of time spent on the Internet, their social interaction online, or their reported levels of depression?