Abstract:

For youth, the Internet presents a number of risks along with a multitude of opportunities. The primary implication of this study is to gain more information regarding HRV as it is an easy quick and Non-invasive technique used. As alteration in HRV is associated with a broad range of medical & psychological health problems, preliminary studies on the effectiveness of HRV assessing changes in related physiological parameters on internet addiction is warranted. The present study aims to study the effect of excessive internet usage with heart rate variability in young adults Materials & Methods: Cross sectional observational data was collected from 357 Professional students in the age group 18-25 years who are at least using internet for more than 6 months. Written Informed consent was obtained. Institutional ethical clearance was obtained .Demographic data & self-administered Young’s scale of Internet Addiction scale was administered which was developed by Dr. Kimberly Young, for evaluating internet addiction. Then classified them into mild, moderate & severe internet adductors based on the score.  A continous HRV recording for 5 minutes was performed in a quiet room by in-house built analogue ECG amplifier built by Dr Maruthy was used & raw data recording was done by Audacity software. Analysis of HRV data was done by KUBOIS HRV software. Linear parameters like Time domain, Frequency domain was analysed. Subjects who had been diagnosed with hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or neurological diseases or who are consuming medications such as beta -blockers or sedatives, psychiatric drugs & also who are smokers ,alcoholic addicts , that might affect the autonomic nervous system will be excluded from the study.SPSS22 version was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics & One way ANOVA was used to test the difference in the mean between the different groups of internet addiction score. Tukey post hoc Test was used to find the significant difference in between the group. & P<0.05 will considered statistically significant. Results: One way ANOVA for the  mean of internet Addiction score showed statistically significance different between groups (F [2,354] = 1474.745,P < 0.001.One way ANOVA for the  mean of duration of usage of internet showed statistically significance different between groups (F [2,354] = 327.16,P < 0.001.Tukey’s post hoc test showed that the mean of duration of severe internet addictors score is significantly higher compared to moderate & mild internet addictors which is statistically significant(P<0.001).One way ANOVA for the  LF/HF ratio showed statistically significance different between groups (F [2,354] = 11.934,P < 0.001.Tukey’s post hoc test showed that the mean of LF/HF of severe internet addictors score is significantly higher compared to moderate & mild internet addictors which is statistically significant(P<0.001). The difference between mean of LF/HF mild and moderate internet addictors was not significant. Conclusion: In internet addictors the sympathetic activity is higher with lower parasympathetic activity which is statistically significant. As youngsters are becoming more prone for this excessive internet usage,it’s an additional area requiring attention by the clinicians to provide appropriate interventions either in aspects of pharmacological or nonpharmacological.