The structure of self-presentation of adolescents in real communication and social networks

Research objectives are to develop questionnaires to assess the severity of the characteristics of self-presentation of adolescents in real and digital communication spaces, as well as to compare the main structural components of self-presentation of adolescents in real and digital communication spaces. The context and relevance of the study. Modern teens are active users of social networks. At the moment there are not so many scientific works devoted to the study of the characteristics of self-presentation of adolescents and their comparison in real and digital communication spaces. There is a lack of research tools to assess the severity of the characteristics of self-presentation of adolescents. Study design. The study included 6 main stages: 1) the identification of the substantial characteristics of adolescents inherent in real and digital communicative spaces; 2) compilation of two questionnaires to identify the severity of the characteristics of self-presentation in real and digital communicative spaces; 3) a study using these two questionnaires to identify the severity of the characteristics of self-presentation of adolescents; 4) the search for factor structures of components of self-presentation of adolescents; 5) expert analysis of the contents of the identified components and their assignment of names; 6) a comparison of the identified components of the self-presentation of adolescents in real communication and social networking. The sample consisted of 290 teenage students (44% male, 56% female) from grades 6 to 9 of a comprehensive school in Moscow. Methods. To the characteristics of adolescents that are characteristic of them in real and digital communication spaces, we used the author’s modification of the method of M. Kuhn and T. MacPartland “Who Am I?”. To determine the severity of the characteristics of self-presentation of adolescents, two author questionnaires were developed. To search for the factor structures of self-presentation components, an exploratory factor analysis, the principal component method, was used. The calculations were carried out in the SPSS 23.0 program. Results. The strongest and most stable components of the self-presentation of adolescents in the real communicative space and in the communicative space of a social network were revealed — “Friendliness”, “Hostility”, “Talent and Originality”, “Popularity” and “Shyness”. These components have substantial similarities with the known types of self-presentations in domestic and foreign classifications, which confirms their substantial validity. Main conclusions. Private acts of self-presentation of adolescents in the real communicative space and in the communicative space of a social network can be combined into groups that form the structural components of self-presentation. The stable structural components of the self-presentation of adolescents in the real and digital communicative space coincide in meaning, but have internal substantive differences.