Digital Fears Experienced by Young People in the Age of Technoscience

Abstract

With the advance of technoscience, digital technologies have started to reshape the traditional array of social fears experienced by younger generations by triggering the appearance of new, digital fears. In this article, we undertake a sociological analysis to investigate the concept of digital fears both theoretically and empirically. Our survey conducted among Russian young people aged 18–30 in 2020 (N = 1050, Sverdlovsk region, Russian Federation) showed that fear is a distinctive characteristic of the social well-being of this generation. Moreover, fear tends to become more pronounced both quantitatively (i.e., the frequency of emergence) and qualitatively (i.e. the emergence of new types). The identified digital fears of young people allowed us to draw their typology. Depending on the specifics of digital threat, the following types were distinguished: those associated with impact and control, crime and security, communication and activity, technology and innovation, and social inequality. We show that the expanding range of social fears leads to the formation of catastrophic thinking in young people, thereby affecting the level of social well-being and distorting the image of the future.

Attracting members of Generation Z to companies via social media recruiting in Germany

“…This study highlights that members of Gen Z are largely unaware that social media can be used for job searches, being in contrast with existing literature (cf. Abramova et al, 2022). Consequently, companies need to make their target group aware of social media throughout the candidate journey and raise their awareness, e.g.…”

“…The use of a smartphone can be seen as their most defining characteristic (Ingold, 2016) while social media are highly important for them, although they are careless and do not take data protection seriously (Hesse & Mattmüller, 2019;Krüger, 2019). In contrast, Abramova, Antonova, Campa and Popova (2022) state that young people are fearful of data security and are causing digital anxiety due to the advancement of technoscience. Regardless of age, one is exposed to social pressure and even the youngest representatives (age of 11) of Gen Z are using social media (Klaffke, 2014).…”