ACADEMIC USE OF SMARTPHONES BY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Information and communications technology has promoted profound changes in different areas (political, social, economic and cultural). In this sense, it is noteworthy that mobile phone especially attract attention, since it has turned into farther than a communication media. In fact, it currently allows to link physical and digital life thus the youngest often make up-to-the-minute decisions with reference to formative or professional area according to the information they receive in their smartphones. Nevertheless, we should not forget the existence of the second digital gender divide, which draws attention to the different skills and uses in new technologies between women and men and its consequences. In this context, arises the need of knowing if young people use their mobile phones similarly in a vitally important area for them, such as education. Thus, the main objective of the present study is based on finding out if there are differences, or not, in how students use their smartphone for academic purposes. Furthermore, we intend to know their opinion about the possibility of using this tool in the educational environment. To this effect, and with the purpose of making an approach for this issue, students enrolled in the academic year 2015-2016 of communication degrees imparted in the Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM) (journalism, advertising and public relations and audiovisual communication degrees) filled in a questionnaire, which gathered information about this theme. The main results of this research revealed that there are no statistically significant differences between men and women according to the use of the smartphone in the educational environment. In this way, the participants of this study would like to use mobile phones for academic purposes, since, specially men, do not consider that using mobile phones decrease their attention. However, students do not usually use this device to access the virtual campus, although those who most often use it are male. Despite this information, Whatsapp is the tool that more frequently students use in order to consult doubts with their classmates after lectures. It is noteworthy that both men and women exactly use it with the same frequency. Therefore, it might be concluded that in the study developed the so-called second digital gender divide cannot be seen.