Perception of trainers and students on the measures to be taken to solve the addiction of young people to social networks

Addictions to online social networks is a problem facing technological societies, and those most affected by this phenomenon are young people and teenagers. Among its effects are the decrease in academic performance and the increase in violent behavior. Given these facts, governments around the world are adopting mechanisms for their prevention. The present work describes the results of research focused on investigating the proposals that would be adopted by the members of the educational community to carry out preventive actions against the addiction and abuse of online social networks. The methodological design has been based on the intensive use of the Nominal Groups technique developed by Delbecq and Andrew in 1971 and which facilitates reaching consensus in a structured group process. The results show the high degree of coincidence among the participants stands out, which validates the usefulness of the measures, and that the addiction to social networks perceives it as a direct consequence of the addition to mobile phones and the Internet. Therefore, it seems necessary that prevention plans should have a generalized perspective that encompasses all three technologies

El educador social y su relación con Internet. Uso o abuso de este medio

Social educators, due to their professions, encompass two spheres of action. These professionals are not common subjects in research studies, and even less if the research addresses their use or abuse of technology. The following article seeks to determine the relationship of these professionals with the Internet, from the perspective of their problematic use of it. For this, a quantitative method was utilized with an ex-post facto design, extracting the data from the Spanish version of the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) questionnaire, with a sample of students enrolled in the Social Education Degree (N=206). The results showed scarce significant differences as a function of the sociodemographic variables such as gender or academic year, as well as a problematic use more than an addiction. These results show that perhaps the technological addictions are deviating towards other resources or media that are different to the Internet, in this new era of virtualization

Teens' Behavior Patterns on the Web: Surfing or Wrecking?

Adolescents’ relationship with technology is controversial both because of the possibilities it offers and because of the risks it entails, even being perceived by them as a real need. In order to improve the knowledge about it, a non-experimental research of transversal style has been carried out using a methodology based on data mining. 1,048 students of Secondary Education participated and answered a questionnaire about their use of the Internet and social networks. Six factors were indentified, which could be recognized as patterns of behavior in the network. They are grouped around: (1) the communicative and informative dimension of the resources; (2) the one related to the security in the network; (3) the risk and vulnerability; (4) the specialized information both general and specific, (5) the transfer and acquisition of goods; and (6) the leisure and parental surveillance. The main findings show that their habits are mostly oriented towards the transfer and transaction along with the maintenance of security, avoinding situations that could involve risk and vulnerability in navigation. The identification of these subgroups is timely in order to develop training and digital literacy actions.

Percepción del uso del teléfono móvil en alumnos desde Educación Primaria hasta Grado Universitario

Currently, the mobile phone has become one more object of everyday life; It is not easy to find someone who does not have one. In the case of teen-agers, together with problems in studies, help with housework or interpersonal relationships, the use of the mobile phone is revealed as one of the main causes of conflict. The aim of this work is to know the self-perception that young people (from 5th grade of Primary Education to University) have on variables related to the use of mobile phones, as well as their perception of whether they consider their use of it more or less problematic. A non-experimental research has been carried out with an ex post facto design and a sample of 1716 subjects to whom an ad hoc questionnaire that includes the Spanish adaptation of the Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale (Bianchi and Phillips, 2005), as well as other classification variables has been applied. Parametric hypothesis contrast tests have been carried out and the results indicates that the participants do not appreciate high rates of abusive behaviors towards the mobile phone in any of the educational stages, finding significant differences caused by any of the variables studied in any of the educational stages. The analyzes carried out reveal the perception of a higher use of the mobile phone in intermediate age (high school students), as well as in girls.