In the present study, out of 380 students of different faculties of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences who participated in the study, 373 (98.2%) were on social media. This finding is consistent with a study conducted in 2018 by Kolan et al. in Ghana, which reported that 100% of the students were aware of social media platforms, and also a study conducted by Mousavi et al. in 2019 on 715 medical students in Sari which reported the total awareness of social media platforms among students to be 99.44%. It is also consistent with several other studies with reports showing more than 85% popularity of social media in which a high prevalence of social media usage was reported (15-18)However, a study by Javadinia et al. In 2012 found that student membership on social media was 35%, which contradicted our study (13). A comparison of the results of our study with other studies shows that students' use of social media is now widespread. This finding can be inferred from a study with similar findings; Modara meta-analysis, which is consisted of 30 studies conducted from 2006 to 2015 in Iran with sample size of 130531 and it emphasizes the high prevalence of Internet use (19).Therefore the reason for the discrepancy between Javadinia's study and our study may be the growth in Internet use. The findings of this study also show that the majority of 373 people who were on social media, spent about 3 hours on social media each day. The most popular social media platforms according to our study was Telegram, Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively. girls spent more time on social media than boys, and the results showed that 72.8% of students do not fully trust the media to express the truth.
The results of the present study suggest that the students on average spent 3 hours of their time on social media each day which supports Shaaban, Hanifeh et al., Upadahayay and Guragain’s findings (20-22). Arab News in 2014 surprisingly reported that people of Saudi Arabia waste their time spending 8 hours on Internet each day, However, Larson et al. (2015), reported that 66.3% of people spend 0.5 to 1 hour on social media per day and few of them (32.2%) spend more than one hour per day (23). It seems that the reason for this increase in use of social media is the advent of more easy-access smart devices, creating the need for people to use them for their daily and essential tasks, speeding up communication and entertainment, and also lack of facilities such as well-equipped gyms and recreational activities near the University campus and lack of interest in the field of study.
The results of the present study also showed that the most popular social media platforms among the students of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences is Telegram, Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively. Ghorbani et al., in a study on Tabriz medical students, showed that the most popular social media platforms were Telegram and then Instagram, respectively (24) Mehdipour's study in 2018 on medical students in Zahedan showed that out of the average of 2 hours and 40 minutes that students spend on the Internet, Telegram plays the most prominent role (5). Babajani Wafsi also in her study stated that Telegram is the most popular social network in Iran(25).
These studies show that Telegram has a high capability for messaging and high educational potential in Iran. In a study conducted by Dashti et al., 79% of social media use was related to Facebook and Twitter, followed by Instagram (26) which seems to contradict our findings. The reason for the popularity of Telegram is its user interface (possibility of making calls, creating channels, groups, etc.) and that it contains more features compared to other platforms.
The results also showed that female students use social media more than male students, while studies by Upadhayay and guragain, Dashti et al., As well as Anand et al., Showed that boys use social media more than girls (22, 26, 27)Also Adiele and Olatokun's study on adults showed that the severity of Internet addiction in men is 3 to 1 compared to women (28). The study of Ghamari et al., on medical students in Arak considers being male to be one of the risk factors for Internet addiction (29). However Alamgir Khan et al., considers the amount of social media usage to be equal in both sexes (30) And Ahmer and Tanzil's study on Karachi medical students estimated that girls use social media more than boys, which is consistent with our study (31). It seems that restrictions on social, cultural, sports and other activities for girls, as well as special cultural circumstances in some areas and climates are the most important factors encouraging girls to spend more time on social media. The results showed that 72.8% of students do not fully trust the media to express the truth, while Forqani and Mohajeri in a study conducted in 2018 on the level the students trust social media in Tehran, The level of trust was a bit more than medium (32).