Young university students and techno-addiction. The use of social networks in their social-educational context

Abstract

The use of Smartphones, Tablets and Social Networks has grown exponentially in recent years as a means of communicating, interacting, sharing and working collaboratively. In-creasingly, young people are recognising that they are establishing a greater relationship with technologies for educational and leisure purposes, to meet new people, create new languages and even to become dependent on them. The aim of our study is to know, an-alyse and determine the degree of addiction of young people from twelve Spanish universi-ties. To do this, we applied an adaptation of the "Social Media Addiction Scale-Student Form" (SMAS-SF, Sahin, 2018) which was answered by 1870 students from seven Au-tonomous Communities (Andalusia, Asturias, Castile and Leon, Catalonia, Galicia, Murcia and the Basque Country). The results obtained show significant differences between the young people of the different Autonomous Communities; moreover, the students do not perceive themselves as people addicted to technology and social networks.