Mental Well-being and Internet Addiction: Insights from Medical Undergraduates

Background: Internet addiction is when people spend too much time on the internet and can't stop is now recognized as a major public health concern issue throughout globally. Aim & Objective: To examine how medical students now utilize the internet and how it affects their mental health. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional research was done among 300 medical undergraduate students who were chosen at random from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and final year. Material & Methods: Internet Addiction Test (IAT) served as the instrument to assess online compulsive use and DASS-21 scale to look at how depressed, anxious and stressed students were. Spearman's rank correlation test was used to assess correlation among depression, anxiety, stress & internet addiction. Results: The scatter plot showed a significant positive association among depression as well as internet use, a strong favourable relationship among internet use as well as anxiety and a weak favourable relationship among internet use as well as stress. Conclusion: Early identification, awareness programs and promotion of healthy digital habits are essential to safeguard mental well-being and academic performance in this vulnerable population.