Educational Use of Social Media in Primary and Childhood Education Degrees at a Virtual University

The use of social networks is part of people's daily lives, and university students, in their academic life, make particularly intense use of them on a daily basis for different purposes. This research analyses the nature, intensity, and type of educational use of these social media by childhood and primary pre-teachers who are pursuing their studies online in Spain. To this end, we designed and validated an ad hoc questionnaire, obtaining 268 valid responses to research the specific characteristics of students studying for degrees in early childhood education and primary education and a double degree in early childhood and primary education at a university that is exclusively online. The results show that participants habitually use a variety of social media, but they only use some of them for educational purposes. General social networks offer future teachers versatility, the possibility to develop and leverage social capital, and opportunities to connect formal, non -formal and informal settings. The most used networks were WhatsApp, YouTube and above all Facebook, a reasonably large percentage use Instagram or Pinterest, and, to a lesser extent, Skype, and a lightly under half have Twitter. With regards to how they are used for educational purposes, a majority of respondents reported using them to find classroom activities, new ideas and material that might be of use in their academic work. It was also found that students consumed more information than what they produced, such that social capital is not used in an optimal way. It is concluded that in a university that operates exclusively online, the use of social networks fulfils the function of covering affective and social needs in an optimal way.