RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOPICS OF NETWORK INTERESTS AND LEVEL OF SELF-REPORTED HEALTH AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS
Significance. Disease incidence among student youth remains rather high, however the majority of students assess their health as good and satisfactory. There are various interpretations of this phenomenon, including significant adaptive reserves in young people, which to some extent level out health-related problems. At the same time, some researchers suggest an important role of students' excessive involvement in interactive entertainment communications, which can distract young people from introspection and reflection on their health. The latter assumption seems to be very rational, however, specific topics of students' interests, manifesting in preferences for certain network platforms, and their possible relationship with the objective health status are yet to be investigated. The purpose of this study is to analyze relationship between thematic preferences for communication platforms among students of medical universities and self-assessments of health. Material and methods. The study was conducted from 15.03.2020 to 30.10.2020 among medical students of the Far Eastern Federal University and Pacific State Medical University. The sample included 387 students of both sexes; the response equaled to 93.3%. To analyze self-assessment of physical and psychological health, "MOS SF-36 brief form of self-assessment of life quality related to health" questionnaire was used. The content of interaction with network communities and platforms was studied using a questionnaire containing a nomenclature of open thematic questions, identical or similar in meaning to those used in a number of earlier works. Result. In contrast to the rest of the respondents, students negatively assessing their health in general, preferred popular platforms including those containing information about healthy lifestyle (3rd rank), and both general and highly specialized medical information (4-5the ranks). For this group of students, there was established a positive average correlation between variables characterizing health self-assessment and markers of interactive interest in health (r = 0.57), and a negative correlation with markers of adherence to entertainment information (r = - 0, 51). Regardless of health self-assessment, entertainment programs and "streams" with feedback turned out to be most popular among medical students; among those who are concerned about their health - content with information about diseases and methods of treatment, as well as healthy lifestyle. Conclusion. The use of different interactive platforms by students is very dynamic and changes significantly over relatively short time intervals. The most popular topics of network interest and preferences are entertainment programs, "shows" and "streams" - live internet broadcasts of various meetings, comments, events. However, students who assess their health as unsatis-factory are significantly more likely (medium negative correlation) to be interested in information about healthy lifestyle, content of popular medical web-sites, and medical information in general. Students who positively assess their health, on the contrary, have a high positive level of correlation between self-reported health and interest in sites and platforms containing entertainment and educational content.