Use of social networks in high school students: Analysis of profiles for educational intervention

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. This work aims to approach the psychosocial study of adolescent behaviour in social networks, in order to define profiles of the generation Z, characterized by the fact that they were born connected to the internet, and to detect possible behaviours of risk, as a focus of interest from an approach of attention to diversity and for prevention purposes from the educational system. METHOD. An empirical study is carried out with a questionnaire on the use of the network administered to 1,388 boys and girls between 14 and 16 years old, enrolled in third and fourth years of Compulsory Secondary Education and in Initial Professional Qualification Programs in high schools in Madrid. Data analysis is with a decision trees technique, based on the CART and CHAID algorithms. RESULTS. Results show that adolescents are generally quite careful in the interactions they maintain online, being the extraverted ones the most exposed in them. With the classification techniques used, a minority of adolescents who could be making reckless use of the internet are also detected, due to the type and content of the interactions they have. DISCUSSION. The research confirms trends pointed out in previous studies with other populations and provides new evidence that must be taken into account in secondary schools to adequately address diversity and to prevent risk behaviours. A detection tool is also provided, with a reliability of 0.73. It is suggested to advance in this line of research of combined use of evaluation techniques and decision trees, due to their diagnostic usefulness to contribute useful information for schools as evaluation of differential needs and for educational risk prevention in the network.