Association between social media use and mental health among Universiti Putra Malaysia medical students

Shaiful Azli, Erika Quraisha and Subramaniam, Preyanka Dewi and Abu Bakar, Amirul Hadi (2020) Association between social media use and mental health among Universiti Putra Malaysia medical students. [Project Paper] (Submitted)

Text FPSK1 2020 25.pdf Download (1MB)

Abstract

Introduction: Mental health problems are highly prevalent among young adults with up to 25% experiencing a mental health problem in a given year. As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), half of all mental illnesses begin by the age of 13 and three-quarters by mid-20s. In 2015, Pew Research Centre reported that young adults were among the earliest social media adopters. The volume of social media use (SMU), encompassing metrics of quantity, have been associated with increased risk for both depression and anxiety among young adults. Many studies have shown that greater daily time spent on social media, increased frequency of Social Media Use (SMU), and multiple platform use were associated with both depression and anxiety. Depression, anxiety and stress in youth may be caused by a lot of factors. Another factor that is poorly researched on could be social media use, which will be the focus of the study. Objective: The main objective of this study was to determine the association between social media use and mental health among medical students in UPM. Materials & Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among medical students of Universiti Putra Malaysia. The stratified random sampling was used to divide all the medical students into homogeneous strata. A google form questionnaire was used. Data was analysed using SPSS Statistics version 25.0 for windows. Results: The response rate was 87%. The respondents consist of mostly Malays, female, and second year medical students of UPM. As for sociodemographic factors, there is an association between ethnicity and mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and stress among medical students of UPM. There is a statistically significant difference between daily Facebook usage and the level of anxiety and stress among medical students with the percentage of 51.4% and 32.4% respectively. There is an association between the number of friends on Facebook with level of depression and anxiety with p-value = 0.003 and p-value = 0.009 respectively. The frequency of updating on Instagram also contributed to the level of depression among these medical students with the frequency of 37 out of 139 and percentage of 27.4%. Frequency of updating on Twitter contributed to mental health problems including depression, anxiety and stress as the p-value is less than 0.05. Conclusion: The association between social media use (SMU) and depression, anxiety, and stress was able to be determined from this study. Hence, there is an association between social media use (SMU) and mental health problems among medical students of UPM. Future study is suggested to increase and raise awareness regarding mental health by educating the public and not solely to medical students only.

Item Type:	Project Paper
Faculty:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Science
Depositing User:	Ms Norafizah Radzuan
Date Deposited:	04 Sep 2023 03:18
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2023 03:18
URI:	http://psaspb.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/1206

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