Features of Internet Communication in Modern Schoolchildren

The paper focuses on a research which revealed that high school students tend to commu-nicate with their classmates mostly via Internet. The outcomes of the research indicate the following: the Russian online social networking service 'VKontakte' is an absolute leader among other similar services; the share of instant messaging services in online communication is by far the largest; elementary school students are interested mainly in the 'Odnoklassniki' networking service and the use ICQ among them is extremely rare. The sample was divided into four basic groups as a result of clustering: 'Yuppie', 'Subculturalists' ('Goths', 'Tolkienists', football club fans etc), 'Gamers' and 'Internet addicts'. As it was revealed, all four groups are similar in their de facto 'excludedness' from interpersonal communication with peers. The paper concludes that, in spite of the hours spent together at school, modern schoolchildren seem to prefer Internet communication to the real life one.