Instagram addiction among students pursuing paramedical and NON-Professional students: A comparative study

This study attempted to compare the extent of Instagram addiction among students pursuing paramedical and non-professional courses. The sample consisted of 257students (110 students from speech and hearing and 147 students from non-professional courses) comprising of 115 male and 142 female students. The students completed Test for Instagram addiction (TIA) developed by D’Souza, Samyukta and Bivera (2018) in one session. Test for Instagram addiction measured addiction in 6 factors- Lack of control, Disengagement, Escapism, Health and interpersonal troubles, Excessive use and Obsession. Chi-square tests were applied to find out the association between levels of Instagram addiction and student groups, gender, domicile and stay. Results revealed that on the whole, 4.7% of them were definitely addicts, 26.1% of them were prone for addiction, 39.3% of them were average users, 28.0% of them used on a low and remaining 1.9% of them had no/minimal addiction towards Instagram. Students pursuing non-professional courses were found to be more addicted to Instagram than students pursuing paramedical courses. Male students had higher proneness and addiction to Instagram than female students. Students hailing from rural and urban areas had higher proneness and addiction to Instagram compared to students hailing from semi-urban areas.