Ideas about Real and Digital Worlds as Part of the Current Worldview of Adolescents and Parents in a Digital Society: Possibilities for Adaptation

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Abstract

The introduction of digital devices into all spheres of life has led to a significant restructuring of our everyday life and the world of the modern person. The real world is increasingly and actively extended by the digital environment, forming a historically unique life in a mixed online and offline reality. Psychology still lacks analyses of the worldview of adolescents most actively socialized in real and virtual spaces and comparisons with perceptions of elder generations that would contribute to understanding the choice of behavioral strategies of different generations and their adaptation to digital transformations. This study compares representations of real and virtual spaces as components of the world picture in adolescents and parents with different levels of user activity, digital competence, and value orientations. The sample was comprised of 282 adolescents aged 14–17 and 337 parents of adolescents of the same age. Adolescents’ pictures of the real and virtual worlds converge, while parents keep these worlds apart in their general system of perceptions. Adolescents and parents have different visions of the virtual world, while they are in common perceptions of the real world. The more time both adolescents and parents spend online, the more positive they perceive the virtual world, which is also characteristic of parents with a high level of digital competence. Adolescents with various value orientations differ in their perceptions of the real world only, while parents differ in their perceptions of both the real world and the virtual world. Thus, compared to the parents’ generation, adolescents, in addition to a generally positive picture of the world and high importance of the real world, also had more positive views of the virtual space and actively adapted to a mixed reality, which could act as a good psychological resource for adapting to major changes and shocks in the pandemic and the transition to distance learning.

General Information

Keywords: worldview, ideas about the world, teenagers, parents, real world, digital world

Journal rubric: Empirical and Experimental Research

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu16.2022.301

For citation: Soldatova G.U., Chigarkova S.V., Ilyukhina S.N. Ideas about Real and Digital Worlds as Part of the Current Worldview of Adolescents and Parents in a Digital Society: Possibilities for Adaptation. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology, 2022. Vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 226–248. DOI: 10.21638/spbu16.2022.301. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.)

References

Alekhin, A.N., Koroleva, N.N. (2013). Semantic structures of the world image as internal factors of selfdestructive behavior of modern adolescents. Universum: Bulletin of the Herzen University, 4, 99–109. (In Russian)

Information About the Authors

Galina U. Soldatova, Doctor of Psychology, Professor, Professor, Department of Personality Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Head of the Department of Social Psychology, Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6690-7882, e-mail: soldatova.galina@gmail.com

Svetlana V. Chigarkova, PhD in Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7473-9025, e-mail: chigars@gmail.com

Svetlana N. Ilyukhina, Psychologist, Foundation for Internet Development, Academy of Social Management, Junior Researcher, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9947-450X, e-mail: svetla.iluhina@gmail.com

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