INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) has been a fundamental instrument in people's lives¹, which is used not only for academic purposes but as a way of relating to their social environment². This technological boom has been so great that world-renowned companies have carried out studies to identify the practices of different population groups regarding ICT³ such as use frequency, length, the number of social network accounts created and experiences with their environment, among others⁴.

Salguero and Otero⁵ indicate that young people mainly use social networks as they are in a stage in the life cycle where biological, physiological and psychological changes take place, which is crucial in the search for identity⁶. This population group has especially interests around social networks because for them, belonging to a social network is no longer a leisure option but a requirement that enables them to be in contact with society and the environment around them⁷.

Other authors agree that young people spend most of their time in online social interaction, being peer relationships their main interest, as they feel entertained, accepted and identified by their likes and end up being part of a virtual community^7-10.

According to Castells¹¹, the concept of the network society is based on the multiplicity of people and devices that produce, receive, process, store and transmit information without distance, time or quantity restrictions. For Ruiz-Corbella and De-Juanas³, a large amount of information and their exchange speed gives room to new spaces for social participation and stimulates the use of social networks.

ICT benefits are manifold. However, there are risks that could threaten the physical and/or mental integrity of adolescents such as addiction, involuntary access to certain content, or becoming victims of ill-intentioned behavior by third parties^9-11.

Studies have documented the risks and consequences that the inadequate use of social networks generate on people's quality of life, especially for adolescents as they become cybernauts at a younger age, often affecting their health, interpersonal relationships, coping with problems, and academic performance, among others¹².

This study aims to determine the influence of social networks on the quality of life of young people studying at two public universities in different countries.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional descriptive correlational study was carried out in two public universities located in Córdoba, Colombia and in the State of Durango, Mexico. The population was comprised of 903 students enrolled in the nursing undergraduate degree in the first academic period of 2017 in both countries.

The sample size calculation was performed at a 95% confidence level, resulting in a total sample of 400 students with a power of 99.8% and an accuracy of 96.4%.

For the methodological purposes of the study, the sample was divided into two groups with the same number of participants, i.e. 200 for each country.

The population met the following inclusion criteria: being enrolled in the nursing program during the study period, voluntarily agreeing to participate in the study, and signing the informed consent.

The sample units were randomly selected. The information was collected using two questionnaires: the first one allowed determining aspects related to the use of social networks, in which we inquired about the access to internet, number of social networks used, daily hourly frequency, reason that promoted to access social networks, accessed contents, neglect of important aspects in life due to the use of social networks, and presence of anxiety symptoms when not having temporary access to social networks, for which a previous pilot test and its validation were carried out.

SF-12^13,14is the second questionnaire used to evaluate eight health concepts: physical function, social function, physical role, emotional role, mental health, vitality, body pain, and general health. It evaluates positive and negative states in population with and without pathologies and provides a profile of the perceived health state, including subjective measures of quality of life. Regarding the SF-12 questionnaire’s reliability in research carried out in Colombia¹³ and other countries^14,15, an internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) was found for the physical dimension of 0.63 and for the mental dimension of 0.72. For construct and criteria validity, an exploratory factorial analysis was performed using a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test to measure sample adequacy, obtaining a result of 0.83, which indicates that the instrument complies with its intended purpose. It should be noted that the Spanish weights were very similar to those of the original North American version with a correlation greater than 0.9 and a variance explanation of 91% for the SF-12 questionnaire items.

The number of response options ranges from 2 to 12 depending on the item assessed. Each question is given a value that is subsequently normalized on a scale of 0 to 100 by performing a raw score calculation to obtain a homogeneous and standardized interpretation of the scores for the comparison of responses according to participants’ nationality.

The information was processed and tabulated in a database for its statistical treatment in the SPSS 24 software. The results are shown in tables and maintain information confidentiality of study participants.

In the analysis of the results, the following statistics were used: sociodemographic characterization, student behavior in relation to the use of social networks, quality of life measures, and descriptive statistics of central tendency. For the relationship between the variables (use of social networks and quality of life), the Spearman´s rank correlation coefficient was used to visualize the correlation between variables. For the association of the results, the Chi-squared test was used.

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

In the sociodemographic characterization, age, gender, and socioeconomic stratum were considered, finding out that most of the participants are in their final or late adolescence, similar to what was found by the Com Score¹⁶, showing that the population that most accesses social networks is between 18 and 24 years old.

With respect to gender, the largest participation was female as this university degree is mainly preferred by women. However, some studies have been conducted to establish the relationship between gender and the use of social networks in which there was no marked difference in the use of these by men and women^17,18.

When analyzing the socioeconomic stratification, Colombian participants belong to stratum 1 and 2, while Mexican participants live rural areas, a situation that is not an impediment to access to social networks. In the same vein, the study conducted by Colás, González, and Pablos² establishes that the socioeconomic level does not represent a barrier to access to technological devices through which they can connect to an internet network and join social networks. In Colombia, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology has created the so-called Vive Digital points located at educational institutions and in areas where a large number of people converge to enable wi-fi connection, and thus, internet access.

The use behavior of social networks was evaluated through internet access, the number of social networks used, hourly frequency of use, reasons that influenced access to these networks, accessed content, neglect of important daily life aspects due to the use of social networks, and finally, the presence of anxiety symptoms for not having temporary access to social networks. 75% of the population surveyed had a mobile device and 9.3% had a computer at home to access social networks, which is a similar percentage found in other research^18,19.

With regard to internet access, surveyed adolescents reported that they can easily access it at their home, university or anywhere else, findings that are consistent with other studies conducted in this same population group²⁰. In terms of the number of social networks used, almost half of the participants reported using 3 to 4 social networks, including Facebook (100%), Twitter (90%), WhatsApp (89%), Instagram (87%), among others. This information is in line with the results obtained in the ComScore research¹⁶.

In a study carried out by García¹⁹ et al., it was found that most of the population studied uses social networks between 3 and 5 hours a day, which is a similar behavior being observed in this study as half of the participants stated that they spend about 1 to 4 hours a day. However, as the hourly frequency increases, the number of people using them decreases.

On the other hand, the highest percentage of students reported that the reason to access social networks was influenced by friends due to the need to communicate with their peers. These results are similar to the findings found by Ruiz-Palmero, Sanchez-Rodriguez, and Trujillo-Torres²¹, where participants reported that there were two special reasons to access social networks, that is, social and psychological reasons, which demonstrates that communication with peers is one of the constants for the creation of social networks.

With regard to the content accessed, according to a study entrusted by Disney²⁰ to learn about the habits of Generation XD (referring to those born between 1995 and 2001 and Generation X parents), who experienced technological advances and did not know life without digital entertainment, mobile devices or social networks. 53% considered that social networks are important for maintaining contact with friends. Moreover, the study conducted by Sánchez, Ruiz, and Sánchez¹⁷ also showed that the population access internet and social networks to communicate with friends and family, which are similar to the findings in this research.

Analyzing the neglect of household chores due to the use of social networks, almost half of the students reported that this situation sometimes happens to them, which may be due to the frequency of daily use of social networks.

With regard to perceived anxiety symptoms for not having temporary access to social networks, 16% of the study subjects stated they were concerned when this happened. According to the study conducted by Garcia, Lopez, and Garcia¹⁹, 40% of the population participating in their research indicated that it would be difficult for them to stop using social networks and 10% reduced their hours of sleep due to the use of social networks. On the other hand, Echeburúa and De Corral²² state that some of the disadvantages of uncontrolled and unsupervised use of social networks are sleep-related problems, attention deficit, depression and psychological problems.

In relation to the health perception from university students, it was evaluated by using the variables physical function, social function, physical role, emotional role, mental health, vitality, body pain, and general health. In this study, there is no significant association of these variables between the two countries, except for body pain. These results differ from other research conducted in this same population group, which shows a positive and significant association between the domains studied^23-25.

A significant association was found with body pain, findings that are in line with those found in other research, which show that as pain increases, the perception of the health state decreases, thus affecting the quality of life^25,26.

Relating the quality of life with nationality, it was observed that there is a low inverse correlation regarding the use of social networks and the quality of life with a value of -0.068, and a significance of 0.177, that is, for both nationalities the longer the use of social networks, the lower the quality of life perceived by the population, although its significance is not high for these two variables. Then it can be said that there is an inverse correlation between the use of social networks and the quality of life of young people.

Analyzing the results, it can be observed that more than 20% of the participants reported that physical or emotional health interferes with social relationships. Thus, social networks play a mediating role because they permit exceeding space and time limits, facilitating communication and fostering new friends, findings that are consistent with the results of the research conducted by Bohórquez and Rodríguez²⁷. However, other studies show that there is an association between internet misuse and health and psychosocial problems such as back pain, migraines, overweight, and obesity, among others²⁸.

With respect to vitality, it was perceived by approximately half of the respondents that they have presented signs of almost never having the energy to carry out activities, arguing that this situation is due to lifestyle, academic commitments, schedules of training practices (typical of this degree) and household chores. In this regard, some authors consider that misuse of social networks generates problems to self-regulate emotions and conflicts over the feelings generated, which limits the performance of some activities of daily life²⁹.

The results related to the quality of life perception showed that most of those surveyed claimed to have a good quality of life. However, a study conducted by Higuita and Cardona³⁰ found that the population, despite belonging to a low socioeconomic stratum (50.7%) and to single-parent families (45.5%), perceived to have a good quality of life. As the authors mentioned above, it is also recommended to make an in-depth assessment of different aspects related to the quality of life.

The main users of social networks are adolescents, who dedicate many hours a day in their use because it has become an important aspect of their daily lives as it influences the way they interact and socialize. Social networks can be used by teachers as educational tools to exchange knowledge, information, and ideas. In other words, the use of technology in education contributes to making it a more personal, interactive and dynamic process³¹.

Furthermore, integrating ICT into nursing education benefits from their usefulness for accessing scientific topics of interest³², allowing them to interact in real-time to meet care needs and contribute to the implementation of health promotion and disease prevention actions at the clinical and community levels.

Finally, this study shows the importance of belonging to functional and active social networks that promote conditions of well-being, health, and quality of life of individuals. When there is misuse of social networks, there are implications in different aspects of the person, thus affecting their quality of life.

The limitations that occurred were related to the students’ schedule as most of them were doing training practices at health institutions, which made it difficult to get the sample at the scheduled time.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on the information analyzed, it is concluded that the influence of peers, that is, friends or people of the same age, is not the main reason why university students access social networks and that students think they use them moderately as an academic and socialization tool.

The perception that there is a good quality of life in relation to health predominates in almost all the population under study both in Colombia and Mexico, with a score of 98.4 and 99.5 respectively, on a standardized scale of 0 to 100. On the other hand, average age of young people is 23 which is an important characteristic that influences the way in which they use social networks, considering that 59.75% (239) have at least 3 social networks and 49.75% (199) use them approximately 5 hours a day, suggesting an excessive and irresponsible use of these. 60.75% (283) of the students had some type of academic problem; low perception regarding their mental health and vitality had an average score of 52.3 and 35.2 respectively, which could directly or indirectly affect their quality of life.

The findings of this research highlight the need to create spaces of socialization with peers in which social networks are not required as a mediator, taking advantage of the time they stay at the university and establishing a relationship of friendship with the people they interact with, and finally developing healthy habits and implementing strategies aimed at preventing cyberbullying.