World of Media (Dec 2020)
Social media and adolescents: Possibilities for satisfying psychological needs. Results of in-depth interviews with Russian pupils and university students
Abstract
The article examines the possibilities for satisfying adolescents’ basic psychological needs in a digital environment. The study is based on a series of in-depth interviews with youth representatives with profound knowledge of digital technologies that are strongly integrated into their daily routine (a total of 20 interviews). The sample group included school pupils and university students from Moscow, Rostovon-Don and Nizhny Novgorod aged from 10 to 19 (born in 1999-2008). According to the most common childhood periodization in Russia by Daniel Elkonin (1989), the chosen age range allows to fully cover the period of adolescence, as well as early juvenility. This simplifi es the task of matching schoolchildren’s motives when addressing the media with their basic psychological needs. The analysis of the collected data indicated that such basic needs of adolescents as desire to obtain knowledge, pursuit of communication and grouping with peers, interest to ‘try on’ various social roles, formation of one’s identity, etc., today can be fully satisfi ed within the digital environment. This makes certain Internet resources (in particular, social networks and instant messengers) especially attractive to the young audience, as the main media and communication platforms for the modern youth.
