Study to assess the effects of social networking sites on medical college students

Background: Online social networks are rapidly changing the way human beings interact. Beside its huge advantages it has now become a hot topic of debate that either it is a useful invention or an invention with full of hazards. Hence this study was undertaken to assess effect of social networking sites (SNS) especially on medical college students. Method: A cross sectional study was done on the medical college students of MVJ Medical College & Research Hospital over a period of 3 months (June 2015 -August 2015) consisting of 408 students. Pre-tested semi structured self-administered questionnaire was used for collection of data regarding usage and pattern of social networking sites and their effects. The data was analyzed using SPSS software for windows version 21.0.Results: The study comprised of 408 students, 274 (67.2%) were females and 174 (32.8%) were males. Majority of participants were using SNS daily (67.2%), commonly used SNS are Whatsapp (87.7%) followed by Facebook (81.4%). Major activity done is chatting (77.9%) followed by uploading photos (41.9%), 24.5% lack other activities, 28.4% get irritated and 23.5% reported mood swings by using SNS. Mostly participants complain about headache (27%) and eye sight problem (29.9%) due to excessive usage of SNS. Most of the student complains of poor academic performance as an effect of SNS (39.7%).Conclusion: SNS surely has their advantages but in the present generation the disadvantages outweighs them especially in medical college students.