Does Instagram addiction Leads to Depression among Students Pursuing Pharmacy Course?

Abstract

Social networking applications are becoming part and parcel of life today. This study attempted to find out the relationship between depression and Instagram addiction of students pursuing pharmacy course. The sample consisted of 136(63 males + 73 females) students comprising of students aged between 18-28 years. The students completed Test for Instagram addiction (TIA) developed by D’Souza, Samyukta and Bivera (2018) and depression was measured through DASS (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). Test for Instagram addiction measured addiction in 6 factors–Lack of control, Disengagement, Escapism, Health and interpersonal troubles, Excessive use and Obsession. The authors measured depression scores using DASS. Pearson’s product moment correlations were employed to find out the relationship between factors of Instagram addiction and depression. Stepwise multiple regression was employed to find out the predictors of depression from components of the test of Instagram addiction. Results revealed that as the addiction to Instagram increased depression of the students also increased linearly and significantly. Excessive use and obsession components of Instagram addiction were the major predictors of depression to the extent of 23%.