Internet Addiction in Young Medical Students Using Young's Internet Addiction Test: A Cross-Sectional Study

Internet has become an indispensable necessity of modern times offering multiple benefits such as information, recreation and communication. However, excessive usage of Internet has been found to be associated with a host of problems in some individuals affecting their personal, professional and social lives.This “loss of control”or “inability to regulate Internet use” has been termed as “Internet addiction” at its extreme, and has been compared to a phenomenon akin to substance abuse leading to an inquiry into its mechanism, whether its disadvantages outweigh its advantages and if it can be regulated or minimized by intervention. It has been found recently by imaging techniques that prolonged Internet use may result in grey matter atrophy causing decrease in concentration, memory 1 and executive ability .