In this day and age, the use of Information and Communication Technologies, social networks (SN) and Internet by young people is constantly increasing. A growing number of studies have focused on the problems arising from the use and abuse of Internet and SN by university students (Stankovska, Angelkovska and Grncarovska, 2016; Odaci & Çelik, 2017;  Murathan, 2018; Altin & Kivrak, 2018; Aytaç, 2018). Analysing the results of these studies, we identified contradictory findings. On the one hand, there are studies which state that university students in general do not have bad habits with regard to their use of Internet and SN (Sánchez, Ruiz & Sánchez, 2015; Ruiz de Miguel, 2016). On the other hand, there are other studies, like those of Fernández-Villa, Alguacil, Almaraz, Cancela, Delgado-Rodríguez, García-Martín, Jiménez-Mejías, Llorca, Joé, Ortíz, Valero-Juan & Martín (2015), which state that six out of every hundred university students have occasional or frequent problems with their Internet use. Said problems could eventually have a negative impact on their daily or social life. Following the same line of research, Stankovska et al. (2016) state that Internet addiction predicts solitude among university students, whereas Carbonell, Chamarro, Oberst, Rodrigo & Prades (2018) show that among university students, the use of SN is the main factor responsible for the perception of a problematic use. With regard to gender differences, studies show that the addiction is considerably greater among men than among women (Odaci & Çelik, 2017; Murathan, 2018; Altin & Kivrak, 2018, Aytaç, 2018).  It is a verified fact (Altin & Kivrak, 2018) that, with the increase of days and hours devoted to the SN, the addiction thereof also increases.  

It emerges that it is necessary to carry out a study of their perception on the topic in order to set up, if needed, educational campaigns for an appropriate use of said technology (Carbonell et al., 2018).  

The present study focuses on understanding the ways in which the male and female students of the Faculty of Education Sciences of the University of Santiago de Compostela use the Internet and SN and on investigating whether this use has a negative impact on their family and private lives.  

The following research questions are addressed:  

1. What is the frequency of Internet and SN use of the university student body?  
2. Do university students perceive that the Internet and SN could have a negative impact on their family and private lives?   
3. Are there any differences between the university students’ attitudes towards the Internet and SN according to their gender?  

The sample consisted of 418 students of the University of Santiago de Compostela enrolled in the first and second year of 4 Educational Sciences specialties: Pedagogy, Social Education, Early Childhood Education, and Elementary Education. The tool employed in data collection was the questionnaire on attitudes, perceptions and Internet/social network use (Rial, Gómez, Braña & Varela, 2014). We analysed those items of the questionnaire which had to do with the frequency and importance of being connected to the Internet and the problems caused by said connection at a family and personal level. We elicited descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) for the items analysed in the questionnaire. By means of different comparisons, we tested whether there were significant differences with regard to the evaluated items in matters of the connection to the Internet (time, reasons, expectations, and impact) according to the gender independent variable. Given that the dependant variables are ordinal and do not follow a normal distribution, we carried out non-parametrical analyses in order to obtain statistical contrasts with a significance threshold (alpha) set at 0.05. The statistical analyses were carried out with the IBM SPSS Statistics Package for Mac, version 20.0.

93.3% of the surveyed university students stated that they basically access the Internet on a daily basis. However, a high percentage (mean =2.76) consider themselves as not giving too much importance to being connected. It was shown that gender impacts significantly both on the frequency of connection and the importance given to said connection, with the women scoring higher on both items. With regard to family life, virtually all of the students indicate there is no parental control of Internet access; therefore, there are also no discussions or conflicts around its use. In this sense, we notice that during the university time, the problems of adolescence – a state in which family conflicts regarding Internet and SN use are obvious – are overcome (Gómes-Franco, Sendín, 2014; Rial, Gómez, Braña & Varela, 2014; Besolí, Palomas & Chamarro, 2018). With regard to the impact of Internet and SN use on the students’ daily life, it is important to note that 66.7% believe that they are connected more frequently than they should, and almost half of them admit having lost hours of sleep and having neglected their studies because of Internet use. This corroborates the results obtained by other studies (Fernández-Villa et al., 2015). Moreover, we need to underscore that, having lost hours of sleep and neglected study-related tasks significantly vary according to the gender variable. It is the women who are most emotionally affected by not being connected, whereas the men are the ones who most frequently neglect their student work because of being connected to the Internet. This incidence of gender was noted in other studies as well (Odaci & Çelik, 2017; Murathan, 2018; Altin & Kivrak, 2018, Aytaç, 2018).

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