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

12/30/2025

Issue

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

Section

Articles

License

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

Licenses and Copyright

The following policy applies to the Iraqi Journal of Sciences (IJAS).

IJAS applies Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license
If you have written permission to do so, yes. If your manuscript contains content such as photos, images, figures, tables, audio files, videos, etc., that you or your co-authors do not own, we will require you to provide us with proof that the owner of that content (a) has given you written permission to use it, and (b) has approved of the CC BY license being applied to their content. We provide a form you can use to ask for and obtain permission from the owner. If you do not have owner permission, we will ask you to remove that content and/or replace it with other content that you own or have such permission to use. Don't assume that you can use any content you find on the Internet, or that the content is fair game just because it isn't clear who the owner is or what license applies. It's up to you to ascertain what rights you have” if any” to use that content.
Many authors assume that if they previously published a paper through another publisher, they own the rights to that content and can freely use that content in their PLOS paper, but that is not necessarily the case; it depends on the license that covers the other paper. Some publishers allow free and unrestricted re-use of article content they own, such as under the CC BY license. Other publishers use licenses that allow re-use only if the same license is applied by the person or publisher re-using the content. If the paper was published under a CC BY license or another license that allows free and unrestricted use, you may use the content in your IJS paper provided that you give proper attribution, as explained above. If the content was published under a more restrictive license, you must ascertain what rights you have under that license. At a minimum, review the license to make sure you can use the content. Contact IJAS if you have any questions about the license. If the license does not permit you to use the content in a paper that will be covered by an unrestricted license, you must obtain written permission from the publisher to use the content in your IJSPlease do not include any content in your IJAS paper that you do not have rights to use, and always give proper attribution.
If any relevant accompanying data is submitted to repositories with stated licensing policies, the policies should not be more restrictive than CC BY.
IJAS reserves the right to remove any photos, captures, images, figures, tables, illustrations, audio and video files, and the like, from any paper, whether before or after publication, if we have reason to believe that the content was included in your paper without permission from the owner of the content.

References

Marshall,G.C.and H.W.Ohm 1987 .Yield responses of 16 winter wheat cultivars to row spacing and seeding rate .Agronomy Journal .79:1027-1030

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.