Features of Digital Leisure for Students of Schools with Different Learning and Upbringing Conditions During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction. There are a large number of facts in the scientific literature demonstrating the increasing influence of digital technologies on the involvement of adolescents in Internet activity. However, contradictions in the experimental material and the heterogeneity of research methods make it difficult to formulate certain conclusions about the nature of the impact of the Internet on adolescents. The peculiarity of our study is to study the behavior on the Internet of school students who are characterized by different learning and upbringing conditions using the same methodology in similar conditions of social restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We relied on the fact that every teenager has certain preferences for virtual leisure, and the choice of online activities is characterized by certain similarities in different educational institutions, but at the same time it may be related to the quality of physical and social activity in a real environment. Methods. The approved author's questionnaire "Digital preferences of modern teenagers" was used, which allows quantifying the features of different types of students' activities in a virtual environment. 96 students from three schools in Lipetsk took part in the survey, differing in learning conditions, different contributions of additional education (sports classes in sections) and active participation in public life of the city. Results. The activity of students in social networks is characterized by differences in preferred leisure activities and time spent on communication on the Internet. For the first time, it was established that overly enthusiastic visiting of social networks, which means using the Internet for 4 or more hours a day, is due to both the humanitarian specifics of the school's educational program and the neglect of students outside of school life. Discussion. The article establishes the fundamental features of the activity of Russian teenagers on the Internet during the Covid-19 pandemic in comparison with their peers from other countries: Russians prefer communication in social networks to all other types of leisure in the virtual space. The practical and significant role of teenagers' activity in real social life, passion for sports and physical culture as ways to prevent the formation of Internet addiction is discussed.

Keywords

• teenagers
• learning conditions
• digital preferences
• social networks
• online games
• questionnaires
• covid-19 pandemic