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Social Media Usage and Self Perception among Dental Students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia

AUTHORS

avatar Ghada Hussein Naguib 1 , * , avatar Ibrahim Alyamani 2 , avatar Abeer M Alnowaiser 3 , avatar Mohamed T Hamed 4

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Restorative Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Oral Basic and Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA

3 Associate Professor, Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA

4 Associate Professor, Department of Oral Rehabilitation, Faculty of Dentistry, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, KSA

How to Cite: Naguib G H, Alyamani I, Alnowaiser A M, Hamed M T. Social Media Usage and Self Perception among Dental Students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. J Med Edu. 2018;17(2):e105614.
doi: 10.22037/jme.v17i2.21416.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Journal of Medical Education: 17 (2); e105614
Published Online: October 19, 2018
Article Type: Research Article
Received: May 15, 2018
Accepted: May 30, 2018
DOI: 10.22037/jme.v17i2.21416
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Abstract

Background: Facebook and other social media are attractive to those in the field of medical education. It can affect human being as some researches show that it has positive effect while others revealed theopposite. This study aimed to describe the pattern of Facebook use among the dental students at king Abdulaziz University and to assess its effect on behavior, social interactions, academic performance and study as well as health status.Methods: This is a cross sectional study targeted the undergraduate dental students in the academic year 2016-2017. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed online to all target students. It included 4 sections asked about the pattern of Facebook use and its purpose, the effect of Facebook use on behavior, study, academic performance and health of the target students. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.Results: Whatsapp (82%) and Facebook (62%) were the most common types of social media used by the students and about 50% of them used Facebook for only 30 minutes per day. Considerable number of the students were using Facebook for educational purposes (66%) and felt that it made the social life better and believed it affected the time they spend with their friends and family (38%). They perceived Facebook as a source of inspiration and motivation (40%) about one third of them felt lonely despite of their many Facebook friends. Feeling less active (58%), having affected eyesight (33%) and headache (45 %) was reported after using Facebook by the students. About 31 % of them decided that Facebook had a negative effect on their study and 33.6 % of them believed that Facebook affected their grade point average (GPA).Conclusion: Although having some positive impact, use of Facebook has also negative impact on the students social interactions, behavior, health, study and academic performance as perceived by the dental students.

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© 2018, Journal of Medical Education. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.
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