THE POSSIBILITY OF SATISFYING THE BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS OF ADOLESCENTS WITHIN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
The article examines the possibility of satisfying the basic psychological needs of adolescents within the digital environment. The study is based on a series of in-depth interviews with youth representatives with a strong knowledge of digital technologies that became a significant part of their daily lives (a total of 18 interviews). The sample group included pupils and primary school students from Moscow, Rostov-on-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 rage allows to fully cover the period of adolescence, as well as early juvenility. This simplifies the task of comparing schoolchildren’s motives in addressing the media with their basic psychological needs. The analysis of the data received indicated that such basic needs of adolescents as desire of knowledge, pursuit of communication and grouping with peers, interest to «try on» various social roles, formation on one’s self-concept, etc., today can be fully satisfied 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 of modern youth.