Prevalence of addiction to online video games: gaming disorder among medical students
Background: Video gaming has become a most popular leisure activity in many parts of the world, which appears to develop problems as a result of excessive gaming, most commonly among students. The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning. In this context present study was done to know the prevalence of addiction to online video games among medical students.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted from March 2017 to July 2018 in Katuri Medical College, Guntur among 575 undergraduate medical students including interns. The data was collected using Young’s online gaming addiction scale questionnaire and was analyzed using SPSS 21 version and Epiinfo 7.Results: In our study, the mean age of students was 22±4 and the average duration of gaming was 3 hours, while students who were addicted to gaming had playtime for 7 hours. Majority of the students used Mobile phones (73.9%), followed by computers (12.2%) for playing games. There was statistical significance between male and female students regarding usage and Problems faced due to video games (p<0.0001, S*).Conclusions: Gaming disorders are on a rise, which had lead students to psychosocial disturbances, anxiety, depression, mood disorders, sleep disturbances, head ache, lack of social activities, and impairment in education. So, it is time to regulate the usage of Electronic devices, Internet and video games.