WHATSAPP CONVENTION-AN ADDICTIVE PERSUASION
Kirubhaa Krishnaraj*, Dr. Balaji Arumugam and Dr. Saranya Nagalingam
ABSTRACT
“WhatsApp addiction” can be coined to someone spending too much time in using whatsapp – an communication application which has many uses like perpetual chatting and multimedia sharing like selfies/images, videos and audios. This application has become an inevitable part of life for almost the entire population especially the adolescents. The sharing of emotional conversations, intimate medias and advanced technologies used in this application plays to be the major cause for addiction. Though many studies were done on internet addiction, no large scale studies were done on whatsapp addiction among adolescents. Materials and methods: This study was done as a cross sectional study during January 2015 and February 2015 with the objectives of assessing the usage pattern among the study population, to assess the evolution of depression, Loneliness & Stress on Whats app usage and to evaluate the burden of Whats app addictive behavior among the study population. The study was done using direct interview method. The data was entered in MS excel sheet and analysis was done using Epi Info software version 3.5, 2008. Results: Totally 517 were studied, of which includes 182 Males (35.2%) and 335 Females (64.8%).In our study majority 64.8% (335) were females and most of them 66.7% (345) belong to 18 to 22 years of age. There was a total of 7.7% (40) of the study population showing addictive behaviour towards whatsapp usage whereas the self reported addictive behaviour was present among 11.4% (59) of the study population. Conclusion: This study showed that majority of the adolescent population were addicted to WhatsApp and hence attention should be paid to reduce the negative impacts such as decreased real life social participation, relationship problems since this application plays the major role in mentally isolating the users in all the social gatherings.
Keywords: WhatsApp Addiction, Application, Addictive behaviour.
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