Abstract

"Background: Internet Addiction is an addiction like any other: it is defined as a compulsive loss of impulse control resulting in dam-age to the user and his or her rela-tionships, schoolwork, or em-ployment. Online gaming, com-pulsive use of social networking, and marathon Internet surfing ses-sions are all included in this pow-erful addition.
Objective: To study Internet de-pendence among undergraduate students of MGM Medical College Indore and to determine preva-lence of Internet addiction disorder among these students.
Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out from Sept.2011 to January 2012 among 242 undergraduates of MGM Medical College of Indore city selected by simple random sampling. The data was collected by inter personal interviews using a standardized ‘Internet Addiction Test’ questionnaire developed by Dr. Kimberly S. Young in 1998.
Results: Among 242 study subjects, 164 (67.8%) were males and 78 (32.2%) were females. Overall analysis to find out proportion of study subjects falling in the catego-ry of internet addicts on the basis of scoring system adapted for the study reveals that 23 (9.5%) subjects have been found to be internet ad-dicts i.e. have scores 80-100. Among 23 (9.5%) internet addicts found in the study, 15 (6.1%) were males and 8 (3.3%) were females. (n=242).
Conclusion: The data is indicative of Internet addiction to be an emerging problem of the modern era
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Key words: Internet Addiction Disorder, Inter-net Addiction Test