The Effects of Social Media on the Undergraduate Medical Students
Kerbala Journal of Medicine,
Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages 2161-2166
Abstractbackground: In recent years, social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube havebecome the most visited websites in the world, with Facebook topping the list andrecently the use of social networking sites has grown tremendously especially among the students. However, very little informations are known about the scale and purpose of use, how students use these sites and, more specifically, whether these sites help or hurt their academic progress.
Aims of the study: The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of social media on undergraduate medical students of Babylon University.
Method: A research questionnaire was designed to determine the factors of social media that have impact on students. Variables identified are age, gender, stage of student, type and duration of use of social media used, effect on study timings, time and duration of sleep at night, the number of days per week, benefit in the medical field, effect on scientific level, continuous sharing with teacher on these sites, and benefit from site of medical college. About 510 undergraduate medical students in Babylon University were randomly selected, six groups were taken according to the six stages of the medical college (85 students in each group).
Results & discussion: The study revealed that ages of students range from 18 to 24 and female students form the largest percentages in all groups. From this research study it was also found that the highest percentages of students in all groups used Facebook and YouTube more than other types of social media and spend about 2 hours on internet. In addition to that higher percentage of students had a benefit from site of medical college and they had same or increased scientific level, moreover there was no relation between duration of use of social media and sleep with study timings and scientific level.
Conclusion: Our study concluded that most of students in all groups use only two types of these media, majority of students spend all days of the week using these media, there was no continuous sharing with teacher in all groups and in most of students there was a benefit from site of medical college. The study also showed that duration of use of these networks has no effect on scientific level of students and most of students has the same or increased scientific level.
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