Personal characteristics of teenagers' susceptibility to the impact of the internet

Abstract

The impact of the Internet on a modern man is confirmed by numerous studies, which often describe directly opposite results, which is due, on the one hand, to the complexity and heterogeneity of the influence of the virtual environment and the pecificiy of its tools, and on the other hand depends on the addressee of manipulative activity. Teenagers often become the object of interest of socially dangerous communities in the global network. Unfortunately, any ways of protecting a child from such content are imperfect and can't fully solve this problem. Thus, the definition of personal factors of the suscptibility of this age category to the Internet impact and the identification of a potential risk group among teenagers can be used for preventive work with addictive behavior, and also contribute to the prevention of extremism and the radicalization of young people. The purpose of this study was to find a correlation between the personal characteristics of teenagers and their views and assessments of the Internet. To achieve this goal, data capture was organized: 521 people took part, psycho-diagnostic techniques were used (A.V. Smirnov's "Semantic universals of the informative and cultural environment", "Dark Triad" technique, the HEXACO technique) and a set of mathematical-statistical analysis of data. It was found that adolescents have positive attitude to the Internet environment, prone to underestimate the possible threats of the informative content and have included the Internet in many areas of their life. The correlation between personal traits and the attitude to the global network exists and it can be argued that teenagers with pecific personal characteristics pecifically perceive the Internet content and accordingly choose different patterns of activity in relation to it. Due to the fact that there were high undifferentiated assessments of various apects of the Internet among the teenagers, a risk group of the most susceptible to Internet was identified. We tried to describe the psychological mechanisms of involving representatives of this group in socially dangerous societies, relying on the correlation between their personal psychological characteristics and the characteristics with which they empower the virtual environment. © 2018 Transilvanian Association for the Literarure and Culture of Romanian People (ASTRA).