Gadgets it’s use and stress on lifestyle

Introduction: Technology can be referred as assortment of tools, including machinery, change, adjustment, and procedures. Technology changes the resources that present naturally into goods that can be consumed by people and which can be used by the society. IT has invented gadgets that are attracting the focus of the present generation. Due to such Innovative devices and services , the youth has become addicted towards these devices in large number. Long-term obsession to technology can lead to psychological problems such as insomnia, irritability, and depression. Sudden depression, loss of self-confidence, and problems in concentrating in studies are often symptoms of Internet addiction. Objectives: (1) To examine the time spent by the students with their technological devices. (2) To study the motive of using these electronic gadgets by the students. (3) To study the effects of the obsessive use of the tech-gadgets and services on mental health and lifestyle of students. (4) To examine the effects of technological gadget usage on the physical health of the students. Material and Methods: The selection of the study area was purposive one. For the analysis of the data, both the quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The study was conducted in DMIMS and AVBRH. All the undergraduate students in the age group of 18–22 years and postgraduate in the age group of 24–28 years at the time of record were included in the study. Observations: Sixty-six percent of the total students are spending more than 6 h/day with their technological devices. Sixty-six percent of the students are spending their time on gadgets for the purpose of entertainment and and remaining 18% of the time they are spending for the purpose of study. About 65% of the students obtained high dependency score. Fifty-two percent for the students spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets have hearing problems. 68.18% of the students who spend 4–6 h of their time on gadgets had vision problems. 52.27% of the students who spend >6 h of their time on gadgets have sleep problems. 71.97% of the students who spend >6 h of their time on gadgets have neck and shoulder problems. Conclusion: The scientific world is changing rapidly. To be in the same pace as that of this change is definitely a challenging task. Therefore, one must know how to exercise control and know what is priority and what is not at a specific time. About 65% of the students obtained high dependency score. Fifty-two percent for the students spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets have hearing problems. 68.18% of the students who spend 4–6 h of their time on gadgets had vision problems. 52.27% of the students who spend >6 h of their time on gadgets have sleep problems. 71.97% of the students who spend >6 h of their time on gadgets have neck and shoulder problems.

The word technology is derived from the Greek word “techne”, meaning the art or skill used to solve a problem, to improvise an already existing solution to a problem, obtain a goal, to handle input/output relation that are applied or to perform a specific function; technology is the development, change, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, and manner of organization.^[1] Meaning that it can be referred as assortment of tools, including machinery, change, adjustment, and procedures. In the past 2 centuries, the meaning of the term technology has been changed significantly. During the industrial revolution, i.e., in the 20^th century, the word technology has gained worldwide popularity.^[2] It is just the outcome of innovative and creative ideas of human beings. It changes the resources that present naturally into goods that can be consumed by people and which can be used by the society. Technology has brought the automation level to such an extent that the time and effort put by humans has been decreased. As a result of this, it has now become easy to access information and the distant locations are getting closer. World is now feeling like a small globe virtually because of the facilities provided by IT and communication system. However, technology has been used for destructive purposes too. Throughout the history, the introduction of weapons of mass destruction has created serious hazard to society

Addiction to technological gadgets and services

In the recent times, IT has invented gadgets that are attracting the focus of the present generation. Due to such innovative devices and services , the youth has become addicted towards these devices in large number. The term addiction is not limited to some specific behavior such as drug addiction and food addiction. According to Morse and Flavin substances and behaviors that are controlled psychologically, preoccupation with these subjects and continuation of activities despite their consequences are generally the symptoms of addiction.^[3] The term addiction actually means a great degree of attraction toward a particular thing or subject. Hence, if someone is addicted toward some objects, he/she can lose control over his/her own mind and face hardships to get rid that object. Today, almost all the students spend too much of their time with their head buried in technological gadgets. According to Young,^[4] addiction to technology is a habitual obsession to engage in technology instead of using it to solve one’s own problems in life. Students misuse technology to avoid conflict as part of their coping mechanism. Long-term obsession to technology can lead to psychological problems such as insomnia, irritability, and depression. Changes in attitude of the students have been noticed. Sudden depression, loss of self-confidence, and problems in concentrating in studies are often symptoms of Internet addiction.^[4] According to Young, students are targeted group to technology obsession. Coping mechanism of the students are poor. During stress, they mostly chose what is comforting them the most, usually something easy to focus on such as online videos or social media sites. Students are also uncertain about their own identity. Most of the time, students struggle to understand how to act in front of others and technology helps them in doing so.^[3]

Mental health

As explained by the WHO, mental health is not just the absence of mental illness. The WHO has defined mental illness as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make contribution to his or her community.^[5] Mental health is about how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive others, and how we are able to meet the needs of life. Mental illness is the kind of general mental health problems we can experience in certain stressful circumstances. For example, workload can lead us to have poor concentration, mood swings, and disturbance in sleep. Such problems being short term in nature are relative to the needs of a particular circumstance makes on us and generally respond to support and reassurance. Almost everyone suffers from mental health issues at some point of their life, but such short-term problems do not lead to mental illness. Being mentally unhealthy, however, can affect our potential as human beings and may cause some serious problems. Mental illness can be defined as the experiencing of severe and distressing psychological symptoms to such an extent that the normal functioning of a person is seriously hampered. Symptoms of unhealthy mind include anxiety, depression, obsession, delusions, and hallucinations. Professional help is needed to recover. These helps include counseling or psychotherapy, drug treatment, or lifestyle changes.^[6] The result of addiction, i.e., addiction to technology, is the effect of it upon health, particularly on mind.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle of an individual is also effected due to addiction to technology. Time and choices are the concerned factors in case of addiction to technological gadgets; the lifestyle is, thus, necessarily affected by the same.

Facts about the technological gadgets and services used by the youth

Mobile/cell phone

Mobile phone allows us to make and receive telephone calls when moving around a wide geographical area via a radio link. Besides telephony, mobile phone can also provide a variety of other services such as text messaging, playing music, E-mail, access to Internet, infrared, Bluetooth, business applications, gaming, and photography. The first introduction of mobile phone was in 1973, and in 1983, the first mobile phone was made available commercially.^[7] From 1990–2011, the number of worldwide mobile phone consumers grew from 12.4 million to over 6 billion, covering about 87% of the world’s total population.^[8]

Computer/laptop

A finite set of erythematic and logical operations can be carried out by computer. Computer has ability to solve more than one kind of problem simultaneously at the same time as a series of operations can be readily changed. A laptop is a modified version of computer that can be foldable and handy due to its small size and battery support for energy, required to run it. Currently, the laptops are usually used to make programs, store data, for entertainment purposes (music and videos), to access net, etc., Currently, the number of computer consumers in the whole world is around 900 million to 1 billion, i.e. around 80% of the global population (Saylor M, 2012).

Smartphone

A smartphone is a type of mobile phone built on a mobile operating system with highly advanced computing capability and connectivity than a feature phone. In early 2013, worldwide sales of smartphones increased than those of feature phones. As of July 18, 2013,^[6] 85% of global handset sales are contributed by the purchase of I-Phone and Android smartphones.^[9]

Services: Internet

The internet is a huge network that uses a range of wires and wireless technologies to link computers together all over the world. WWW is an accumulation of linked pages that are accessed using the Internet and a web browser. The objectives to use Internet are to shop online, to network socially, for games, news, travel information, business, advertising, etc., At present, the most popular search engine is Google, which is receiving hundreds of millions of search queries in a day. The percentage of the global population using Internet in 2005, 2010, and 2013 is 16%, 30%, and 39%, respectively. It is 8%, 21%, and 31% in the developing world and it is 51%, 67%, and 77% in the developed world.^[10]

Social networking service is a design that helps build networks or relations socially among people who may share interests, backgrounds, activities, or real-life connections. Social networking sites allow consumers to share ideas, posts, pictures, events, activities, and interests with people in their network.^[11]

Need of the study

We are living in a world, where a problem can be solved using technology. Technology has advanced to such an extent that it is almost necessary to have electronic devices, especially television, mobile phone, Internet, and video games. Students have become so used to have technology around them.

Technology could also have negative impact on their lives, especially in their studies and family relationship when used too much, even though having these electronic gadgets makes life easier, comfortable, and handy at most of the times.

Objectives

Following are the objectives of the study

• To examine the time spent by the students with their technological devices.
• To study the motive of using these electronic gadgets by the students.
• To study the effects of the obsessive use of the tech-gadgets and services on mental health and lifestyle of students.
• To examine the effects of technological gadget usage on the physical health of the students.

This study is based on the medical students. The study was conducted in DMIMS and AVBRH. The study was conducted during September 2019. The selection of the study area was purposive one. For the analysis of the data, both the quantitative and qualitative methods were used. For the data analysis, MS Word and MS Excel were used.

Study period

The study was conducted from February 13, 2019, to April 14, 2019 (2 months).

Study area

DMIMS campus and Acharya Vinoba Bhave Rural Hospital, Sawangi (Meghe), was selected by purposive sampling method.

Study participants

Undergraduate and postgraduate students of DMIMS and AVBRH.

Inclusion criteria

All the undergraduate students in the age group of 18–22 years and postgraduate in the age group of 24–28 years at the time of record were included in the study.

Exclusion criteria

Students who were noncooperative were excluded from the study.

Data collection and analysis

Semistructured and unstructured interviews were conducted with the students regarding the use of the technological gadgets and services and its effect on their health and social status. The study deals with the students and it also consists of the information about health, so these types of interviews were chosen for this study. The data assembled through this process were helpful for qualitative analysis in the study.

Ethical Approval

Ethical approval for this study (DMIMS(DU)/IEC/2019-20/1988.) was provided by the Ethical Committee of Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences (Deemed to be University) on 11/04/19.

1. The percentage of the total students who spend more than 6 h/day with their technological gadgets and enjoy the services out of them are 66%. This also means that time spent with their devices and services is 1/4^th of their time. The percentage of students using the gadgets for 4–6 h/day is 22% and the percentage of them using these for 2–4 h is 8%. Very less amount of students spend 1–2 h/day with their gadgets, i.e., only 8 (4%)
2. Sixty-six percent of the total students spent time on gadgets for the purpose of entertainment and remaining 18% of the time the students are spending for the purpose of study. They are spending 16% of their time with their gadgets for the purpose of communication
3. Sixty-five percent of the participants obtained high dependency score, and 35% of the participants obtained moderate dependency score
4. The percentage of students having hearing problem when they use gadgets for more than 6 h is 23%. The percentage of students having hearing problem when they spend 4–6 h on gadgets is 52%, 11% had hearing problems in case of the students who use 2–4 h of their time on gadgets, and for students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 14% had hearing problems
5. The percentage of students having vision and headache problems when spending more than 6 h on gadgets is 43.18%. 68.18% of the students have vision and headache problems when spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets, 43.75% of the students have vision and headache problems when spending 2–4 h of their time on gadgets, and in case of students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 25% had vision and headache problems
6. 52.27% of the students who spend >6 h of their time on gadgets have sleep problems, 15.91% of the students have sleeping problems when spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets, 6.25% of the students who spent 2–4 h of their time on gadgets have sleeping problems, and in case of students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 12.5% had sleep problems
7. 71.97% of the students have neck and shoulder problems when spending >6 h of their time on gadgets, 38.64% of the students have neck and shoulder problems when spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets, 12.5% in case of the students spending 2–4 h of their time on gadgets, and in case of students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 12.5% had neck and shoulder problems.

The present study conducted at DMIMS campus and AVRBH campus, Maharashtra, India, where 200 students had participated. Among the 200 participants, 100 were MBBS, 50 were BDS, and 50 were postgraduate students. Students within the age of 18–26 years were included with an average age being 21 years. Most of the participants have two or more than two technological gadgets. Most of the participants are using their gadgets for more than 6 h. Most of the participants are using Internet for a large period of time. The participants spent most of their time with the gadgets for the purpose of entertainment. There is a higher degree of dependency of the participants on their technological gadgets. The conclusion of the present study partly support earlier studies in other countries^[12] (Young et al., 2004).

It is shown in the study that addiction to technological gadgets has effects on the lifestyle of the participants. The participants spending more time on gadgets are observed to do less physical work as compared to others. These participants of this section often spend less time with their friends and family. They prefer indirect interaction, i.e. through social media than direct communication with others. The current study draws support from Erickson’s^[13] study.

In the current era of technology, the present generation depending on the technological devices and the services provided by them is at its highest level, and they cannot be restrained from their use completely. It will be an impossible idea to think so. As we all know that it takes a lot of time to make a habit but it takes more versatile time than that to leave these threatening habits. In case of using the technological gadgets, their use should be driven by a need rather than driven by luxury and they should not compromise with other mandatory day-to-day activities of life. We are becoming more self-centered because of the endless use of the technology, which is a threat to our belief of togetherness and our values of sharing and caring.^{[14],[15],[16],[17],[18],[19],[20],[21],[22],[23],[24],[25],[26],[27],[28],[29],[30],[31],[32],[33],[34],[35],[36],[37]}

Summary

• Sixty-six percent of the total students are spending more than 6 h/day with their technological devices and enjoy the services out of them
• Sixty-six percent of the students are spending their time on gadgets for the purpose of entertainment and remaining 18% of the time they are spending for the purpose of study
• About 65% of the students obtained high dependency score; 35% of the students obtained moderate dependency score
• Twenty-three percent of the students who spend more than 6 h of their time on gadgets have hearing problems, 52% for the students spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets have hearing problems, 11% in case of the students using 2–4 h of their time on gadgets, and for students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 14% had hearing problems
• 43.18% of the students who spend more than 6 h of their time on gadgets had vision problems, 68.18% of the students who spend 4–6 h of their time on gadgets had vision problems, 43.75% in case of the students spending 2–4 h of their time on gadgets had vision problems, and in case of students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 25% had vision problems
• 52.27% of the students who spend >6 h of their time on gadgets have sleep problems, when spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets, 6.25% of the students who spent 2–4 h of their time on gadgets have sleeping problems, and in case of students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 12.5% had sleep problems
• 71.97% of the students have neck and shoulder problems when spending >6 h of their time on gadgets, 38.64% of the students have neck and shoulder problems when spending 4–6 h of their time on gadgets, 12.5% in case of the students spending 2–4 h of their time on gadgets, and in case of students using the gadgets for 1–2 h, only 12.5% had neck and shoulder problems.

We are living in a world of knowledge and technology. The scientific world is changing rapidly. To be in the same pace as that of this change is definitely a challenging task. Therefore, one must know how to exercise control and know what is priority and what is not at a specific time. Management of knowledge, management of time, and setting up the priorities of life should guide our manner in the way we use technological gadgets and services. Last but not the least, use of any commodity should be driven by necessity rather than driven by luxury, so that we can obtain the most pleasure and happiness.

Acknowledgment

Mere words do not suffice in expressing my gratitude to those who helped us to complete this work.

In Sanskrit and as per Indian traditions, a true teacher (guru) is the one who removes any trace of darkness which obscures the search for enlightenment, and the one who showers the light of perception and wisdom upon his pupils. First and foremost, We would like to express our gratitude and sincere thanks to our esteemed Teacher and Head, Dr. Abhay Gaidhane Sir, Professor and Head (Community Medicine) for not only creating and completing this project, but also for all the help and knowledge he has bestowed upon us at this phase of my life.

We are extremely grateful to Dr. (Mr.) Nikhil Dhande, Assistant Professor, and all other staff of Department of Community Medicine for all their help, support, and for their advice which has helped us to clear our concepts.

We are extremely thankful to study participants for their extreme cooperation during the project and those who directly or indirectly helped us in conducting this study.

The almighty has enabled us to achieve all that we have been able to and we offer our humble obeisance to him for everything.

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