Abstract:

Nowadays we can say that most young people use one or more social networks and with the advent of smart phones we can say that more and more users are added, being more accessible, enabling young people to easily and quickly exchange messages, photos and videos. From the standpoint of educational, an academic social network integrated by teachers and students achieves great results, that is, interdisciplinary working groups are formed, tutorials, publication of educational videos, among many options offered by technology. If we talk about young people, the truth is that they use it mostly as a leisure activity, as a simple way of communication and / or distraction and in this sense it is important to be evaluated.

The purpose of this study is to determine how it affects the use of social networks in the academic performance of students of secondary level, particularly the General Secondary No. 2 "Reform Laws" in the afternoon shift. To conduct this research we worked with a representative sample of 100 students (53 women and 47 men) between 13 and 15 years old, lower middle class. The research is explanatory type with a quantitative approach, using the survey as a tool for gathering information.

To determine the condition in the poor academic performance the following variables were considered: sex, social network, patterns of use, type of device used, time spent on its use, activities affecting, relegated activities, school performance, why does it affect performance and forget problems.

More than half of the overall sample think that the use of social networks affects their academic performance. In both samples (women and men) indicated that the use of social networks affects their academic achievement for not complying with their school activities, that is, because they do not study or do not perform their tasks. However, some students mentioned the distraction factor as a reason.
With the survey results may be mentioned that students apparently believe that the time spent using networks is related to the level of impact on their school performance. This is because most students say that this situation impairs their performance, regardless of the number of hours that are connected. There are elements in the surveys which show that the use of social networks significantly affect the academic performance of students.

Keywords:

Social networks, academic achievement, secondary level.