Background:

Currently, social networks have become part of people’s daily lives; they represent a new form of interaction and one of the most used services, especially by young people.

Objective:

to characterize the use of social networks by fourth-year medical students at the Cienfuegos University of Medical Sciences.

Methods:

an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study, which had as a universe the entire enrollment of the fourth year Medicine career at the Medical Sciences Cienfuegos University. The information was collected through surveys. A digital database was created, and the statistical analysis was carried out by descriptive statistics.

Results:

female was the predominant sex, and the largest age group was between 20 and 23 years old. The 96.3% reported that surf through the networks; and the 68.9% have taken time away from studying and other activities, to use social networks.

Conclusion:

There is a tendency to use virtual social networks, and the most used is Facebook. The time spent by the students is medium, motivated mainly by the information they view through the so-called Like or Likes.

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