Samuylova Olga S.

Background. The relevance of this study is associated with the widespread use of social media by adolescents with a high risk of turning to aggression and violence.

Objective. The purpose of the study is to investigate the characteristics of adolescents' perceptions of peer profiles in social networks that vary in degrees of “security,” and their readiness to carry out various communicative actions depending on their psychological characteristics. We hypothesized that: 1) There is a connection between the psychological characteristics of adolescent users of a social network, and their ability to differentiate profiles of peers-users of social networks and communicative actions in social networks; and 2) The oculomotor activity of adolescent users of social networks is associated with the degree of attractiveness of a peer profile.

Design. We used the methods of “Peer attachment” (G. Armden, M.T. Greenberg, 1987 as adapted by G.V. Burmenskaya, 2015); Emotional intelligence (D.V. Lyusin, 2009); Recognition of emotions by sight (S. Baron-Cohen et al., 2001); cognitive methods for assessing social information (S.V. Molchanov et al., 2018); eye-tracking technique; and conversation. The study included 40 adolescents 14 to 17 years old.

Results.We distinguished three groups which differed in their attachment to peers, emotional intelligence, and cognitive methods of processing social information; they comprised three types – “idealizing,” “selective,” and “cautious.” We showed that the "selective type" is characterized by the highest degree of differentiation of "dangerous" and "safe" profiles of peers in social networks, and high selectivity in implementing various communicative actions. The greater attractiveness of the main information in a peer’s profile is reflected in more fixations, fixation time, and returns to the zone. 

Acknowledgments.This work was financially supported by the Russian Federal Property Fund No. 18-013-01080 “Cognitive methods for processing social information from the Internet as a factor in the formation of adolescents' ideas about the moral regulation of relations in the modern information society”.