Social educators and their relationship with the Internet. Use or abuse of this medium

Abstract

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.