The Impact of Social Media as a Tool of E-learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Mental Health of Medical Students: A Gender-based Study

Ibrahim Tareq; Raghad Majeed Azawi; Marwan S.M. Al-Nimer

doi:10.69923/ggxefm32

The Impact of Social Media as a Tool of E-learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Mental Health of Medical Students: A Gender-based Study

Authors

Ibrahim T. Ibrahim college of medicine, University of Diyalala Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1619-1644
Raghad M. Azawi College of Medicine, University of Diyala Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6123-1468
(MBChB, MD, Ph.D) S.M. Al-Nimer Department of Clinical Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of Diyala Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5336-3353

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.69923/ggxefm32

Keywords:

COVID-19,, smartphone, e-learning, psychometric parameters, cognitive function, Social Media

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the impact of both social media as a tool of E-learning, and the stressful situations due to COVID-19 as a disease or as a result of lockdown on the psychometric parameters and cognitive function of the medical students. This study was carried out on the students of the College of Medicine; the University of Diyala in Iraq during June-October 2021 A self-reported Google Form‎ submitted questionnaire to the students. The questionnaire included items related to demographic characteristics, COVID-19 illness and psychometric assessments of sleep, anxiety, depression and cognitive function. Most of the participants (92.3%) used smartphones in E-learning indoors, poor sleep quality was observed in 40%, and males significantly complained from changes in the sleep pattern compared with females. The mean ± SD of total scores related to depression was significantly (p=0.03) higher in females (10.7±7.1) than the ‎corresponding value in males (8.4±5.9). Females reported. Females showed a significantly higher score of cognitive function impairment compared with males. COVID-19 as a disease or as a result of lockdown using social media as a tool of E-learning ‎due to lockdown, are the precipitating factors for abnormal sleep behavior in males, and depressive symptoms with impairment of cognitive function in males.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Ibrahim T. Ibrahim, college of medicine, University of Diyalala

Ibrahim Tariq Ibrahim, is a lecturer at the College of Medicine, University of Diyala, Iraq. He received a B.Sc. degree in physics science from the University of Baghdad in Iraq and M.Sc. degree from the College of Medicine University of Baghdad in Iraq. has published several scientific papers in national, international conferences and journals. He can be contacted at email: Ibr_33@yahoo.com
Raghad M. Azawi, College of Medicine, University of Diyala

Raghad Majeed Azawi is a lecturer at the College of Medicine, University of Diyala, Iraq. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in computer science from the University of Diyala in Iraq. Her research areas are AI, Machine Learning, image processing, and data mining. She has published several scientific papers in national and international conferences and journals. She can be contacted at email: mraghad699@gmail.com
(MBChB, MD, Ph.D) S.M. Al-Nimer, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of Diyala

Marwan S.M. Al-Nimer, is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Specialist in internal medicine, College of Medicine, University of Diyala, 32001-Baqubah.

Downloads

Published

30-12-2025

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 4 (2025): Volume 2, Issue 4

Section

Research Articles

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Licenses and Copyright

The copyright of this article is retained by the author(s).

This article is published by the Iraqi Journal for Applied Science (IJAS) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction, adaptation, and reuse of the work in any medium or format, including commercial use, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and the source, a link to the license is provided, and any modifications are indicated.

Authors retain full copyright of their work and grant IJAS a non-exclusive license to publish, archive, preserve, and disseminate the article, including registration of metadata and Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) through Crossref.

Any third-party material included in this article remains subject to its respective copyright and licensing conditions. Authors are responsible for obtaining all necessary permissions for such material before publication.

For complete details regarding copyright, licensing, permissions, and reuse, please refer to the journal's Copyright and Licensing Policy available on the IJAS website.

License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

How to Cite

[1]

I. Tareq, R. Majeed Azawi, and M. S.M. Al-Nimer, “The Impact of Social Media as a Tool of E-learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Mental Health of Medical Students: A Gender-based Study”, IJApSc, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 1–7, Dec. 2025, doi: 10.69923/ggxefm32.