RESEARCH ARTICLE


The Prevalence of Addiction to Social Network Among Students in Iran and its Factors Related: A Study Conducted in 2020



Hoorieh Rahiminia1, 2, Hamid Soori1, 3, Mahdi Jafari4, 5, Soheila Khodakarim1, 6, *
1 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2 Students’ Research Committee, School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 Director of Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4 Department of Clinical Psychology, School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
5 Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases Research Center, Research Institute for Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
6 Department of Biostatistics, School of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2021
Volume: 17
First Page: 170
Last Page: 176
Publisher ID: CPEMH-17-170
DOI: 10.2174/1745017902117010170

Article History:

Received Date: 10/6/2021
Revision Received Date: 24/8/2021
Acceptance Date: 27/8/2021
Electronic publication date: 19/11/2021
Collection year: 2021

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Creative Commons License
© 2021 Rahiminia et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; Tel: (+98) 71 3230 5410; Fax: (+98) 71 3230 5400; E-mail: skhodakarim@sbmu.ac.ir


Abstract

Background:

In the present era, the prevalence of addiction to social networks has shown that many users, including students, are detaching from the real world. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the prevalence of addiction to the social networks among students in Iran and its related factors.

Methods:

This is a cross-sectional study conducted in 2020 on 1000 students in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. The data collection tool was a standardized questionnaire about addiction to the social networks distributed online among students. Statistical data were analyzed using Stata software version 14.

Results:

Generally, 462 students (44%) had addiction to social networks, of which 449 (90.04%) had slight addiction and 13 (9.96%) had severe addiction. The results showed that age (p = 0.001), type of disciplines in the treatment-related subgroup (p = 0.03) and using nerve medicine (p = 0.0001) had significant relationships with addiction to social networks.

Conclusion:

Considering that a high number of students in the present study are at high risk of addiction, it is suggested that educational programs should be implemented to improve the knowledge of parents and students for optimal use of social networks and raise awareness of the harmful consequences of addiction.

Keywords: Prevalence, Addiction, Social Networks, Students, Factors, Disciplines.