Interconnected adolescents. Evolution in recent years in secondary school students

Abstract

Considering the complexity of factors surrounding the lives of young people today, the topic of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their influence on secondary school students was explored. The presence of technology has burst forth with great strength and impact in the lives and leisure of teenagers. Therefore, it is important to know and analyze how ICTs are affecting them and how they are used (Del Barrio 2017). Teenagers cannot understand their lives, social relationships, or leisure without being immersed in them. Their lifestyles are largely digital, which they find enormously attractive and, at times, addictive. For this reason, our objectives in this work are: to understand the usage habits related to the internet and social networks by secondary school students, analyzing from a comparative perspective how this has evolved in just four or five years, as well as the influence these are having on the lives of these young people. The methodology involved a literature review based on the research of Andrade, B., Guadix, I., Rial, A. & Suárez, F. (2021), for their UNICEF report, Del Barrio (2017) in the Autonomous Community of Cantabria, and indicators from the OECD (2024) report with PISA 2022 data, titled: Students, Digital Devices, and Success. This review also facilitated the development of personal reflections on the observed changes over the years between these studies.