Background. Digital socialization is understood to be mediated by all available digital technological processes for mastering and appropriating a social experience online. Understanding of this new type of socialization requires studying parental mediation strategies for children’s online activity, as well as the level of digital literacy of both children and parents, including through the prism of adolescents’ confrontation with online risks. Objective. To study digital socialization and the role of parents in this process; to reveal relationships between parental user activity, mediation, and digital competence, and adolescents’ user activity, digital competence, and experience of online risks. Design. The study was conducted on the basis of the EU Kids Online 2017–2019 survey methodology. The sample consisted of 1,553 schoolchildren aged 12–17 and 1,219 parents of adolescents the same age, all from the Russian Federation. Results. The findings show that parents underestimate the online risks faced by adolescents, especially the most common communication and content online risks. Adolescents often do not notice parental “restrictive” and “active“ mediation of their online activities. Adolescents’ request for parental help with their online difficulties depends not on the parents’ digital competence, but on their active mediation. In following parental active mediation and safety mediation strategies, adolescents are more likely to face online risks, but at the same time they use active coping strategies. The negative relationship between the adolescents’ digital competence and parental restrictive mediation and technical control suggests that excessive control and limitations hinder the development of knowledge and skills in the safe mastering of the Internet. Conclusion. The digital gap between adolescents and parents is observed both in confrontation with online risks and awareness of this experience, and in the application of parental mediation strategies. Parental active mediation provides stronger digital socialization and more constructive ways of coping with the threats of the digital world – online risks, which are the consequence of deep immersion into this world.

The paper addresses the phenomenon of media multitasking that is being widely spread among children and adolescents in the context of digital socialization. The previous research has revealed its strong connection with cognitive control, executive functions, and academic performance, yet the specificity and efficacy of media multitasking performance, especially among children while they carry out usual activities, remains insufficiently studied. A quasi-experimental study, including digital tasks of various types on a computer and smartphone, the dots task for executive functions, and a socio-psychological questionnaire, was conducted with the participants of three age groups: 7–10, 11–13, and 14–16 years old (N = 154). The results indicate that media multitasking is connected not with sex, but age; the older the participants are, the more likely they tend to work in a multitasking mode. Furthermore, preference for multitasking has been found to be positively related to higher user activity. Although the total task performance rate is insignificantly lower in the multitasking group as compared to the non-multitasking one, a significant negative effect of media multitasking on total performance time was revealed. The results of the study that indicate a strong connection of media multitasking with the intensity of Internet usage, cognitive functions, and performance time, suggest its considerable role in social and cognitive functioning of children and adolescents.

<p>Understanding the trajectories of identity formation in response to the interplay between traditional and digital socialization, especially among the younger generation, is interesting for predicting the areas of opportunity and risks of a changing society. The aim of the study is to carry out a comparative analysis of the specific aspects of online and offline identities and their structure in adolescents and parents. The study sample comprised 396 adolescents aged 14 to 17 and 411 parents of adolescents of this age. The &lsquo;Who Am I&rsquo; method was used to assess real and virtual identities. The results show that the online and offline identity matrices of adolescents and parents differ from each other in a number of parameters. For adolescents, the categories of the &ldquo;Social Self&rdquo; and &ldquo;Personal Self&rdquo; appear online as equal, while offline the importance of the social Self increases. For parents, the social Self definitely dominates in the two worlds. For adolescents and parents, digital identity is the leading subcategory in the online social Self. Parents are characterized by a less rich Self-image in the virtual space compared to both adolescents and their own image of the real Self. The virtual Self and the real Self do not oppose each other but actively interact on the principle of mutual complementation. Meanwhile, for adolescents and parents they differ significantly in content and are constructed in different ways. Compared to parents, adolescents develop a more holistic Self-image online and offline, which allows them to master adaptive strategies of mixed convergent reality better, and in retrospect the strategies prove to be pre-adaptive and determine a higher readiness of new generations to change.</p>

The introduction of digital devices into all spheres of life has led to a significant restructuring of our everyday life and the world of the modern person. The real world is increasingly and actively extended by the digital environment, forming a historically unique life in a mixed online and offline reality. Psychology still lacks analyses of the worldview of adolescents most actively socialized in real and virtual spaces and comparisons with perceptions of elder generations that would contribute to understanding the choice of behavioral strategies of different generations and their adaptation to digital transformations. This study compares representations of real and virtual spaces as components of the world picture in adolescents and parents with different levels of user activity, digital competence, and value orientations. The sample was comprised of 282 adolescents aged 14–17 and 337 parents of adolescents of the same age. Adolescents’ pictures of the real and virtual worlds converge, while parents keep these worlds apart in their general system of perceptions. Adolescents and parents have different visions of the virtual world, while they are in common perceptions of the real world. The more time both adolescents and parents spend online, the more positive they perceive the virtual world, which is also characteristic of parents with a high level of digital competence. Adolescents with various value orientations differ in their perceptions of the real world only, while parents differ in their perceptions of both the real world and the virtual world. Thus, compared to the parents’ generation, adolescents, in addition to a generally positive picture of the world and high importance of the real world, also had more positive views of the virtual space and actively adapted to a mixed reality, which could act as a good psychological resource for adapting to major changes and shocks in the pandemic and the transition to distance learning.