Community Medicine Abstracts - College of Medicine and Health ...

Project No. 193 (B-2002/3)Internet Use and Risk of Addiction Among UAE University studentsStudent Authors: Shereena Khamis Saeed K. Al-Mazrouei, Aisha Saeed Salim SaeedAl-Suwaidi, Asmaa Ebrahim Obaid Saeed Al-MannaieFaculty Supervisors: Dr. M. Newson-Smith, Dr. M.M. HossainAbstract:Objective To study abnormal Internet use although normal use of Internet is notknown yet. Some researchers defined this abnormal use as possible Internet addiction.Methods Data was collected from a sample of 201 individuals whom were randomlyselected and were from different age groups and different faculties of the UAEUniversity. Questionnaires were administered to gain information about the use andaddiction of Internet amongst UAE university students (males and females).Results The study showed that 95.5% of university students do use Internet while4.4% do not use Internet. Using the Internet addiction scale developed a significantassociation was found between the Internet addiction scale and gender (P=O.003).This study showed that 43.8% of high-risk individuals and 32.2% of low-riskindividuals had noticed that their academic performance was better after Internet use,while 12.4% of the high-risk group individuals noticed that their performance wasworse after Internet use (P=0.001). Psychological symptoms were highly associatedwith the risk of internet addiction, a percentage of high risk group experienced moredepressive feelings, anger, wish to be alone and wanting to get away from problemsbefore logging into the internet with significant P values (0.046,0.009,0.006 and0.000). The association between a pre-existing chronic illness and disability wasevaluated in co-ordination with the risk of Internet addiction scale. The results showedthat (2.3%) of people with chronic illness are at high risk of Internet addiction(P=0.444); while (4.5%) of people with special needs were at high risk of Internetaddiction (P= 1. 000). 21.2% of people whom spend more than 9 hours/week hadtheir social life and social activities affected (P= 0.037) and 14.7% of participants usedinternet as an escape from socialization.Conclusions High prevalence of Internet use among UAE university students wassupported as well as the existence of risk of Internet addiction with predominance ofmale gender in addiction scale.