THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS ON THE FORMATION OF VALUE ORIENTATIONS OF STUDENT YOUTH

ABSTRACT

With the growth of general informatization it is impossible to deny the increasing influence of social networks on human life in general. The article is devoted to the analysis of the intensity and aspects of the influence of social networks on the formation of value orientations of BSU students.

Keywords: mass media social networks, opinion leaders, values, value orientations.

Every year, social media becomes more and more a part of our lives as an integral part of social communication. Thus, globally, the number of social network users increased by 13% in the 12 months to the beginning of 2021 - that's almost 500 million people. For Russia, the percentage of engagement in social networks is 67.8% of the population (+5.1% from 2020 to 2021). And the most active users of both the Internet in general and social networks in particular are young people aged 18-24 - mostly students [2].

Under the influence of global digitalization and virtualization of life, the process of youth socialization is being transformed, which leads not only to positive but also to negative consequences. Particular attention in this binary should be paid to the formation of value orientations of young people.  In the minds of today's youth, established socially important values are being supplanted by individualistic orientations. Inconsistent attitudes and a holistic view of the world are becoming more and more frequent. Social networks are to some extent replacing the classical institutions of socialization - family, school, real friends and peers. Dissatisfied with the surrounding reality young people begin to prefer the virtual world as the most acceptable, which leads to the formation of an alternative reality [1].

The author's sociological study "The influence of social networks on the formation of value orientations of Russian youth (on the example of BSU students)" aimed to determine the problem outline on this issue and was conducted in December 2021 among full-time students of BSU.

It did not come as a surprise that all respondents use social media; moreover, they do so on a daily basis. Most respondents (41%) spend 8-12 hours on social networks - almost the majority of the day. And 5% of students spend more than 12 hours on social networks.

Figure 1. Amount of time students spend on social media

The most popular social networks among students are VKontakte and Instagram* - 100% of respondents use them. YouTube (81%) and the new emerging social network TikTok (75%) are also prominent in this regard. However, when it comes to the frequency of use of these services, the distribution looks slightly different: Instagram* is the absolute leader - 97% of young people mentioned it as the most frequently used social network. In second place is VKontakte (81%). It is important to note that TikTok bypasses YouTube in this case, with 68% of young people using the former on a regular basis.

Twitter and Odnoklassniki are used on a regular basis by less than 10% of respondents (6% and 1% respectively). Moreover, when answering this question, not a single respondent mentioned Facebook* (figure 2).

a)                                                    b)       

Figure 2. a) - popularity of social media; b) - frequency of social media use

It is also interesting to compare these results for each service among its users. Thus, for Instagram* and Vkontakte, these figures do not change - 97% and 81% respectively. TikTok, on the other hand, has a fairly high percentage of regular users - 90.7% (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Percentage of regular social media users among students

The most common purposes for using social media are communication (80%) and entertainment content consumption (78%). The least frequently mentioned by students is that they use social networks for self-education (30%). Also one third of respondents are interested in consuming educational content (33%) (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Goals of social media use among students

With the development of the information society, the concept of 'opinion leader' has become increasingly popular, defined as an actor with the ability to influence the views of a particular audience. In the context of social media, opinion leaders can be understood as bloggers.

According to the survey, the vast majority of young people follow bloggers who publish humorous content (80%). At the same time, even though the consumption of informative content is not a goal in itself for most respondents, more than half of the students, namely 55%, follow bloggers who publish such content. Around the same level (52%) is young people's interest in accounts dedicated to art: photographers, musicians, artists, etc.

According to many researchers, social media influences the value orientations of young people. To confirm or refute this hypothesis it is necessary to identify these very value orientations.

Respondents were asked to choose no more than 3 things in life that are important to them. Thus, the first place in the ranking was occupied by family (95%). The second place is occupied by material well-being - 80%. Given these results, it is interesting that only 43% of respondents believe that career is important for them, and they are interested in interesting work even less - only in 35% of cases.

The three outsiders are values such as spiritual development, power and social recognition: 18%, 4% and 2%, respectively (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Students' most significant values

Despite this distribution of the most important values when asked about their plans for the next 5 years, students generally mentioned travelling (52%) and earning money (46%) - such results are relevant to the position of the value of material wellbeing in the rating, but somewhat contradict the primacy of family values. This can most probably be explained by the fact that students understand family as their parental family. However, when it comes to starting their own family, only 25% of respondents mention such plans.

It is also interesting that completing a professional education is a priority for only 36 per cent of students, even though studying is their main occupation (Figure 6). At the same time, among young people who mentioned education as an important life value, completing vocational education is a priority in 37% of cases, a value virtually indistinguishable from the average.

Figure 6. Students' priorities for the next 5 years

Speaking about the qualities most important in other people, respondents most frequently mentioned responsibility (47%) and honesty (44%). Education is important to only 33% of respondents, but among those surveyed, 79% are young people for whom education is a core value. In addition, 64% of them follow bloggers on social networks who publish informative content, which is 11 percentage points higher than the average. Thus, we can say there is some correlation between the content of interest and the values of young people.

At the same time, despite their own interest in a prestigious job and material well-being, respondents in only 14% of cases singled out diligence and productivity in work as important qualities in the people around them. To a certain extent, people tend to project their own important values onto those around them, so these results could indicate a lack of inclination for hard work among respondents, which is even more interesting when combined with a desire for high earnings.

Unfortunately, the belief that you don't have to work hard to be well off has recently been popularized on social media. Bloggers sell "infoproducts" that teach audiences how to earn money without having to be formally employed or work for a company: these methods are usually associated with earning money in social networks. We are talking about SMM-specialists, taggers, storismakers: people who lead accounts for money. This ideology reduces young people's desire to work, but creates dreams of a rich and easy life.

Speaking of bloggers who are the most popular on social networks, young people most often mentioned Sasha Mitroshina, who is the author of in-demand webinars on Instagram promotion.

Danya Milokhin, Ida Galich and Danila Poperechny, authors of primarily humorous content, were also named. Yuri Dud, according to respondents, is one of the most popular journalism bloggers.

Young people themselves do not deny the influence of bloggers and media personalities on their own value orientations (42%). The influence of family (48%) and the internet and media (54%) are also important in this respect.

In addition, respondents were asked to rate the influence of social media on the value orientations of their peers from 1 to 5, with 1 being no influence and 5 being very high influence. A value of 4.36 was obtained as a result of the processing of the survey results.

In 46% of the cases this influence was rated as very high - a score of 5. 47% of respondents considered it high - a score of 4. Thus 93% of the students surveyed believe that social media to a greater or lesser extent influences the value orientations of their peers.

There is a correlation between the duration of the use of social networks and the assessment of the significance of their influence on values: the more time the respondents spend on social networks, the higher the average score.

Figure 7. Distribution of assessments of the impact of social networks on the value orientations of respondents' peers

For example, young people who spend more than 12 hours on social networks score this indicator at 5. And students, for whom this time is 1-2 hours on average, rate this impact at 3.25 (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Average ratings of the impact of social media on the value orientations of peer respondents by the length of time per day they use social media

The distribution of assessments of the impact of social networks on the value orientations of young people in terms of the time of use of social networks per day is presented below.

Respondents spending more than 8 hours on social networks most often gave a score of "5": 8-12 hours - 73% of "5" ratings, 27% of "4" ratings, more than 12 hours - 100% of "5" ratings.

Figure 9. Distribution of assessments of the impact of social media on the value orientations of respondents' peers in terms of duration of social media use per day

Thus, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. All respondents use social media on a daily basis, with most of them spending most of their time in the "new media" space of 8 hours or more - 46%.
2. Respondents single out family and material well-being among the most valuable things in life. However, only a quarter of respondents plan to start a family in the next five years. At the same time the pursuit of material wellbeing is confirmed by the position of earnings in the ranking of life priorities.
3. Distribution of values and qualities important in the surrounding people is also not always the same. For example, when their aspiration for material wellbeing is high, many students do not value diligence in others, which may partially indicate the absence of this quality in themselves. This phenomenon may have been influenced by the popularization of easy earnings on social networks by popular bloggers. In addition, almost a third of respondents follow bloggers who publish content along the lines of "hedonism" - the philosophy of pleasure as the highest value in life.
4. Respondents themselves do not deny the impact of social media on values: almost half highlight bloggers' behaviour as a determining factor in the formation of value orientations, and the absolute majority of respondents believe that social media has a significant impact on this process for their peers.
5. The distribution of the aforementioned evaluations depends on the duration of social media use per day and this dependence is directly proportional. This may also indicate a projection of one's own importance of social media onto one's peers.

*(социальная сеть, запрещенная на территории РФ, как продукт организации Meta, признанной экстремистской – прим.ред.)

References:

1. Вараксин, А. В. Влияние социальных сетей на формирование ценностных ориентиров современной молодежи / А. В. Вараксин // Преподаватель ХХI век. – 2016. – № 2. URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/vliyanie-sotsialnyh-setey-na-formirovanie-tsennostnyh-orientirov-sovremennoy-molodezhi.
2. Digital 2021: главная статистика по России и всему миру. URL: https://exlibris.ru/news/digital-2021-glavnaya-statistika-po-rossii-i-vsemu-miru/.