OBJECTIVE: Determining the impact of digital use and internet gaming on empathy of nursing students undergoing remote learning during closure of learning institutions nationwide.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional online survey was conducted from October to December 2020.
SETTINGS: Two established public institutions located in Malaysia.
PARTICIPANTS: A total of 345 nursing students pursuing diploma and bachelor nursing programs.
METHODS: Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ), Digital Addiction Scale (DAS) and Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short form (IGDS9-SF) were self-administered via Google Form™. Following principal component analysis of TEQ using IBM-SPSS™ (V-27), path analyses was performed using SmartPLS™ (V-3).
RESULTS: Despite the increased time spent on digital devices (∆ 2.8 h/day) and internet gaming (∆ 1 h/week) before and during the pandemic, the proportion of high digital users (1.4 %) and gamers (20.9 %) were low; and sizable ≈75 % had higher-than-normal empathy. Digital-related emotions and overuse of them were associated with lower empathy (β = -0.111, -0.192; p values < 0.05) and higher callousness (β = 0.181, 0.131; p values < 0.05); internet gaming addiction predicted callousness (β = 0.265, p