Background:

the excessive consumption of information through digital media, sometimes distorts reality from content created for certain purposes.

Objective:

to analyze the influence of information often excessive, which young Ecuadorian university students receive through digital media, with emphasis on the domain of information about consumers.

Methods:

a descriptive study was carried out during the second semester of 2017, at the Israel Technological University in Quito, Ecuador. Theoretical methods were used: historical-logical, inductive-deductive and analytical-synthetic; empirical ones: the survey in the form of a questionnaire to students.

Results:

the students stated that they spend most of their time in internet for academic consultations, entertainment and communication; it was found that the most visited pages were social networks. The information was created by people or groups without a verifiable identity in real life. There was no appreciation of who generates the content, what the message intends or with what sources it is created. The so-called opinion leaders delimit the virtual reality according to their decision, which gives the content a great influence on the consumer.

Conclusions:

the contents generated by the opinion leaders for the users through virtual societies, can shape parallel realities and manipulate the information according to the interests represented by these groups, which sometimes propitiate distorted opinions about reality.

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