Internet addiction prevalence and contributing factors in the medical faculty students

Purpose: this study aimed to determine the internet addiction prevalence and contributing factors among medical faculty students in pamukkale university. materials and methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted among medical faculty students at pamukkale university in november 2011. 386 (71.4%) students participated in the study. data were collected with a questionnaire consisting of two parts. the first part of the questionnaire contains 24 questions including socio-demographic data, and the second part contains 20 questions of the internet addiction test developed by young. family affluence scale was used to determine the socio-economic level of participants. results: 211(54.7%) participants were girls. the mean score of dependency index is 22.9±15.6. in terms of internet use, 363 (94.0%) participants were found to be normal users, 20 (5.2%) were risky users and 3 (0.8%) were addicted users. the mean of internet use per week was 11.5±11.7 hours (the limits of 0 to 130 hours). in terms of the time spent on the internet, 44.3% (n=171) of participants used internet less than 1 hour per week; 28.2% (n=110), between 1-2 hours; and 27.5%.(n=105) more than 2 hours. internet addiction prevalence was 7.4% in men and 4.7% in women (p = 0.371). however, 33.7% of men used the internet more than 2 hours per week, the ratio was 21.9% in women (p=0.017). age, class, socioeconomic factors and smoking does not affect the status of being a risky or addicted user. conclusion: the rate of risky or addicted use of internet is low among medical faculty students. studies with a large number of participants to examine the factors that affect internet addiction in a more detailed way are needed to be done.