Instagram Addiction among Students Pursuing Medical and Dental Courses: A Comparative Study

Instagram is reported one of the most fast growing social networking application, which is widely used by a majority of students pursuing various professional and non-professional courses.  In the present study an attempt is made to compare the extent of Instagram addiction among students pursuing medical and dental courses. The sample consisted of 220 students (123 medical and 97 dental) aged between 17-25 years were selected randomly from medical and dental colleges from Mysuru and Mandya districts of Karnataka state. Students pursuing medical and dental courses completed the Test for Instagram addiction (TIA) developed by D’Souza, Samyukta and Bivera (2018). Test for Instagram addiction measured addiction in 6 factors– Lack of control, Disengagement, Escapism, Health and interpersonal troubles, Excessive use and Obsession. Two-way ANOVA was employed to find out the difference between course, gender and interaction effects.  Results revealed that students pursuing medical courses had higher scores in two of the components-lack of control, health and interpersonal troubles and in total Instagram addiction than students pursuing dental courses. Male and female students did not differ significantly in their addiction towards Instagram.  The interaction effects between type of course and gender were found to be non-significant for Instagram addiction.