What women do on the Internet?: an analysis of Internet use by adolescents in Galicia

Abstract

The expansion of the Internet in the 21st century has become an element that is used routinely and is often associated with some kind of problem related to the frequency and form of use. In this sense, adolescents are the most vulnerable Internet users, being women and girls those who suffer most from the dangers of the network, such as grooming or sexting, as they are a population with fewer control mechanisms. In this sense, the institutional machismo present in Western society is also transferred to the online world, leaving women in the background. For this reason, the aim of this study is to analyze the gender differences in the use habits, risky practices, and problematic use of the Internet by students in compulsory secondary education (ESO) in Galicia. For this purpose, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 234 students (between 12 and 18 years of age) from the entire autonomous community. The results show that risky practices, online gambling and pornography are more common practices for them, and they feel more pressured to send their own sexual content. Finally, in the problematic use of the Internet, there are differences by gender, with 15.6% of problematic use by women. These data reveal the need to adopt public initiatives of a formative nature that carry out interventions aimed at responding to this problem from the field of education, emphasizing the gender perspective, since women and girls are the most vulnerable segment of the population and can thus eliminate negative habits or behaviors towards them.