The Relationship of Doomscrolling with Anxiety in Students of the Faculty of Medicine, Islamic University of North Sumatra

Doomscrolling is a new term which is commonly used as a tendency to keep scrolling on the bad news, even though the news is miserable, hurtful, and scary. This new term affects society at various ages, gender, caste, class, religion, and national boundaries. Doomscrolling comes up as a vicious cycle, which is when users stick to a pattern to search for negative information, no matter how bad the news is. It is hard to distinguish which is the trusted news on social media. This spread of misleading propaganda creates fear, anxiety, and confusion. This research design is observational analytics with cross-sectional design. The sample of this study was 216 respondents, which was included in the inclusion and exclusion criteria at the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara. The data was taken in February 2024 using stratified random sampling. Data collection was carried out using the HAM-A and Doomscrolling scale questionnaires. In this study,found that the value of p=0.000 (p<0.05) which shows that there is a significant relationship between Doomscrolling and Anxiety which has a value of r=0.303 where the strength of this relationship is weak (p=0.2-0.4) and the direction of the correlation is positive (+) means there is a unidirectional relationship at the Faculty of Medicine,  Islamic University of North Sumatra. There is a relationship between Doomscrolling and Anxiety in Students at the Faculty of Medicine, Islamic University of North Sumatra.