Buenos Aires University Students in Times of Internet

Abstract

The widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), coupled with global changes have taken place in most social environments. The subject of research are the university students at the School of Philosophy and Literature, and at the School of Social Sciences, both at the University of Buenos Aires. The goal of investigation is to explore the ICT’s habits in this population. This article stands at the intersection of the fields of communication and education, specifically associated to the issue of the insertion of ICTs in these students’ everyday life. In the review of the state of the art, are taken up some concepts as “degradation culture” (Eco, 1968). The method was qualitative, based on 120 semi-structured indepth interviews. The initial hyphotesis was that multitasking and intensive use of ICT’s have its side effects in “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001). The main conclusion of this work is that intensive use of ICTs involves a paradox: on the one hand, greater accessibility, availability and information exchange around the “culture of connectivity” (Van Dijck, 2013), but also a degree of “distraction”, “superficiality” and “speed” around the view of “degradation culture” (Eco, 1968), which we called, based on a native category, “academic fast food”