The discovery of all these technologies (Internet, mobile phone and videogames) by boys, girls, adolescents and society in general, has generated countless transformations in the different aspects of everyone´s life. It has brought about great benefits, but also some drawbacks. We make reference to them, to their cases and effects in this thesis, diagnosing the reality, suggesting a way to prevent this addiction in potential users through a programme adapted to this reality. The main aims are 1-To study the pattern of the use of the videogames, Internet and mobile phones by Argentinian children and adolescents. 2-To validate in the Argentinian population the questionnaires of the technological addictions which are present in the prevention programme PrevTec3.1: Internet Dependence Test (IDT), Mobile Phone Dependence Test (MBDT) and Videogames Dependence Test (VDT). 3- To apply and adapt the Internet module of the programme PrevTec3.1 to Argentinian children and adolescents. 4-To value the efficiency of applying the Internet module of PrevTec3.1 for Argentinian children and adolescents. To achieve this, a group of students was formed. They belong to the careers of Psychology, Social Worker and Criminology. They took part in the training on technological addictions taught by Dr. Chóliz at Aconcagua University in 2011 and 2012. A sample was taken of 601 children and adolescents (54% men and 46% women), between 12 and 17 years old, students at seven public and private educational centres, attending from seventh year at Primary School to fifth year at High School. The questionnaires and the PrevTec3.1 were adapted to the idiosyncrasy of the Argentinian population not only in the vocabulary, but also in the time and the dynamic of the adolescents. So, for example, two workshops were carried out, instead of three as it had been planned. This happened because the institutional time available for this task was definite and there is no tutorial system. The sessions took on average 40 minutes each one approximately. In each school the duration was different depending on the students´participation. After implementing the prevention programme, the frequency in the use of technologies and the scoring of the questionnaires of technological addictions were assessed. The results were not significative statistically and this is, from our viewpoint, because the prevention work, and especially the carrying out of the educational measures put into practice in the sessions involved the family, parents and/or family referents in charge of the education. Because of this a session was implemented for parents or family referents in order to inform them, sensitize and transmit strategies of intervention, attitudes, develop behaviours to help their children to comply with the assigned tasks and avoid the addictions to technologies. This session with the parents was designed on the basis of the programme PrevTec3.1 whose prevention actions were focused specifically on children and adolescent . We believe that this implementation can mean an important contribution to this programme. To sum up, this work has been carried out in different stages, which have been done taking into account the results that were obtained in each one, but we can end up emphasizing that the main objectives proposed at the beginning of this project were achieved.
2014-07-18
