Features of the Use of the Internet by Russian Teenagers: The Regional Aspect

In the last two decades, adolescent behaviour has significantly modified by new factors in the form of information technologies embedded in the education and leisure. There is knowledge that the worse of socio-economic conditions of life determine the increase of gaming activity and communication in social networks of teens. The assumption of our study is that different living conditions in metropolis and industrial city in central Russia determinate the teenagers’ actions changes in Internet. The paper used a questionnaire to assess the preferences of gaming and internet activities by students of schools in Moscow and Lipetsk of Russia. Methodical features of the questionnaire in the form of the need to select a single choose from a set of possible answers to the questions determine the specific distribution of teenagers with different kinds of internet activity compared to teenagers in other country. The survey of 144 students of schools in Moscow and Lipetsk online showed both similarities in the use of video games and time on social networks with the well-known features of the younger generation of other countries and the specific features of Russian schoolchildren. Most teenagers of Russia used social media communications compared to gaming, with a sufficient degree of competence, higher in the industrial city, Lipetsk, than Moscow. The time of total interaction with gadgets roughly corresponds to the results of cited works in the sample of teenagers of Lipetsk in Moscow this value is higher. Thus, we have proved the impact of regional conditions on adolescent behaviour in cyberspace with Lipetsk teens’ normative characteristic in corresponding Moscow students.