Research Paper The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) Volume 7, Issue 1,DIP: 18.01.049/20190701 DOI: 10.25215/0701.049 http://www.ijip.in | January- March, 2019 © 2019,D’Souza, L; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Instagram Addiction among Students Pursuing Medical and Dental Courses: A Comparative Study Lancy D’Souza 1 * ABSTRACT Instagram is reported one of the most fast growing social networking application, which is widely used by a majority of students pursuing various professional and non-professional courses. In the present study an attempt is made to compare the extent of Instagram addiction among students pursuing medical and dental courses. The sample consisted of 220 students (123 medical and 97 dental) aged between 17-25 years were selected randomly from medical and dental colleges from Mysuru and Mandya districts of Karnataka state. Students pursuing medical and dental courses completed the Test for Instagram addiction (TIA) developed by D’Souza, Samyukta and Bivera (2018). Test for Instagram addiction measured addiction in 6 factors– Lack of control, Disengagement, Escapism, Health and interpersonal troubles, Excessive use and Obsession. Two-way ANOVA was employed to find out the difference between course, gender and interaction effects. Results revealed that students pursuing medical courses had higher scores in two of the components-lack of control, health and interpersonal troubles and in total Instagram addiction than students pursuing dental courses. Male and female students did not differ significantly in their addiction towards Instagram. The interaction effects between type of course and gender were found to be non-significant for Instagram addiction. Keywords:Instagram Addiction, Medical and Dental Students Internet addiction is seen as an impulse control issue, which does not include usage of an intoxicating drug and is fundamentally the same as pathological gambling. Some individuals who access internet may build up an emotional connection to on-line friends and activities which they are accustomed on their computer or smartphone screens. Internet users may enjoy events that enable them to meet, socialize, and share thoughts using video-calling, social networking websites, or "virtual networks." Other types of internet addicts spend unhealthy hours on the internet surfing or "blogging". Blogging is a compression of the expression "Web log", in which an individual will post analyses and keep customary narrative of events and functions (Young, 2009). Some experiencing Internet addiction may make on-line personas or profiles where they can change their personalities and put on a show to be somebody other than themselves. Those at 1 Associate Professor of Psychology, Maharaja’s College, University of Mysore, Mysore-570 005, India *Responding Author Received: January 7, 2019; Revision Received: February 16, 2019; Accepted: February 24, 2019