Prevalence of Internet Use among Adolescents of 15 to 18 Years of Age in A Village under RHTC of A Medical College: Cross-Sectional Study

Background: The environment in which today’s adolescents are growing has changed drastically and affected their access to internet as well. The study was conducted with the aim of estimating the prevalence of internet use and pattern of internet use among adolescents of a village area. Methods: About 114 adolescents of a village in Western Maharashtra belonging to age group 15-18 years participated in the study. They were selected based on the inclusion criteria of age group and willingness to participate in the study via universal sampling method and were interviewed with the help of semi-structured questionnaire, which included questions regarding socio-demography, internet use and its interrelationship with other variables. Chi-square test was used as a test of statistical significance to study the association between the predictor variable and the outcome with (p<0.05) as a level of significance. Results: The prevalence of internet use was 99.12%. Where 74% of adolescents used internet for an average of 1-2 hours in a day and 26% used internet for an about 2-4 hours in a day. Taking p < 0.05 as a level of significance we found gender was significantly associated with duration of internet use (p = 0.01) and Purpose of internet use (p = 0.004). Conclusion: Almost all adolescents have access to internet and are more inclined towards its use for non-educational purpose which can be detrimental for their educational progress and long-term career goals. Hence, monitoring of internet use by adolescents has to be done by guardians/teachers. Further studies should be conducted on cause-effect relationship to study the either way of association.