Information Approach To Personal Development

Modern technologies in the information space

The current stage of development of a technological society is characterized by significant civilizational changes that researchers have not encountered before. These civilizational changes are associated with the emergence and development of new technologies and a new information technology space, which are becoming an integral part of the life of a modern person. Their influence is becoming more widespread and comprehensive. The new era is characterized by the transition of a technological society to the next stage, when technology and equipment cease to be something external to the individual. They are so firmly embedded in a person’s life that he does not notice their constant presence and constant use and acutely feels and suffers from their lack in situations of deficiency of access to them.

A person perceives technology not only as external tools, but as an extension of himself and his psychic abilities. Technical means and technologies are internalized by a person, becoming one of the psychological parameters of the picture of the world, determining the features of his perception of the world and himself, interaction and communication with others ( Emelin et al., 2012; Martsinkovskaya, 2018). The ongoing transformations and civilizational shifts problematize the very understanding and definition of personality, personal development, and set the task to researchers to identify factors that determine the personal development of children and adolescents in a modern technological society.

In a modern technological society, to the traditional factors determining the development of personality (social, biological, genetic factors), a new factor is added - the development of engineering and technology, especially the development of information technology and the Internet. It is this factor that becomes leading at the present stage and leads to numerous transformations of the personality development process. These transformations are a consequence and product of technological development. Thus, modern means of communication and movement significantly change a person’s ideas about space and time, transforming the space-time continuum of a person as a framework regulating the formation of world and self-image ( Martsinkovskaya, 2018).

Internet and transitivity

Different aspects of transitivity actualize different personality problems. The multiplicity makes it difficult for a person to choose, including the choice of an identification group (real or virtual) and the space of socialization ( Belinskaya, 2013; Martsinkovskaya, 2015). This is only one side of the problem. Plurality and the associated high variability significantly increase the chances of non-adaptive adolescents who have difficulties in communicating offline with their peers and are rejected by society for various reasons. In other words, any teenager with any deviations and perversions can easily find on the social networks the same “strange” peers with similar views and interests (lovers of toy railways and trains, etc.) that will become their desired identity group, making it easier their socialization and the formation of personal identity.

Modern information technologies modify the entire lifestyle of a modern person, which naturally has its own personal consequences. The character of communication is changing, as well as the personal characteristics of a modern person. Of the possible personal transformations, the main attention of researchers was attracted by the transformation and dynamics of personality identification structures.

At the initial stage of the Internet’s spread, researchers focused mainly on comparisons of virtual and real identities, the possibilities of a “game with identity”, Internet addiction, representative practices, and features of online and offline communication. At this stage, online and offline realities were rigidly divided, based on the position on the differences in phenomena and human behavior in different environments and using different communication tools, including digital technology. Moreover, the virtual space was considered mainly as a recreational and compensatory space, allowing a person to realize his needs, which seemed to him inaccessible or ineffective offline.

Today, the Internet and digital technologies are so widespread and included in everyday practices of human activity and communication that the border between online and offline is blurring, becoming more and more arbitrary, which is one of the manifestations of “fluidity” and transitivity. The blurring of the boundaries between online and offline is also confirmed by studies of identity construction features - today the previous discrepancy between online and offline identities, which was typical for the period when the Internet and social networks appeared and began to spread, is no longer fixed ( Soldatova & Rasskazova, 2014). At the same time, the dominant identity style is gaining importance. The development of Internet technologies and the features of network communications have different effects on users with different identity styles. The results of many works make it possible to make an assumption about the information style of identity as the most appropriate in the conditions of a modern transitive technological society. For users with an informational identity style, virtual and real spaces form a single communication space that opens up additional resources for confirming their own identity. With increasing transparency, users of social networks mainly provide reliable information about themselves, which suggests that social networks as a whole are an effective resource for confirming a user's real identity. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that in network communication a person constructs not the identity itself, but its “digital double”, “virtual shell”, which is a projection of real identity and a way of representing it.

Personality in the modern information society

A significant consequence of the development of technology and the Internet is the transformation of the mechanism and the nature of the person’s communications, which also can be reflected as an important factor determining the personal development in a modern technological society. This influence is associated not only with the expansion of the horizontal connections of the individual and the increase in his social capital. Constant interaction, links and communication with others become an independent value and the norm of everyday life for modern adolescents and youth. The desire to remain constantly online, to maintain communication is noted by many researchers. This applies to generations of “conditional” millennials (Y) and centennials (Z) ( Howe & Strauss, 2000). More than 80% of millennials sleep with their smartphones, 32% study social networks everywhere. If at the beginning of widespread use of social networks, the features of internet communication of adolescents were considered as an addition to their direct offline communication, today, with the development of technology and the popularity of mobile Internet, the boundaries of online and offline communication practically disappear, and teenage respondents find it difficult to separate them in their answers. Nevertheless, they say that the same communication standards that are used in real life should be preserved in the online space ( Voiskunsky et al., 2014). It should be noted and the transformation of the communication language, which is largely based on visually images, when emoticons and gifs replace whole phrases and small texts. At the same time, written language is increasingly moving closer to oral colloquial speech and is partially replaced by it. This requires the person to master and understand the language of Internet communications ( Belshaw, 2011).

If children receive primary skills in communicating with gadgets and other digital devices from parents and mutual learning during communications with peers, the self-learning mechanism, the algorithm of which is embedded in the device and technology, is subsequently turned on. Thus, the process of interiorization of technologies occurs not only during communication and interaction with parents and peers, but also in direct interaction with digital devices and technologies.

Modern network: potential capacities

Undoubtedly, the developing potential of computer technologies is very great, but there are also negative consequences of excessive enthusiasm for computers. The ambivalent influence of the Internet is manifested in the fact that, on the one hand, communication on the network, the appearance of new friends (and the process of virtual communication has an undeniable tendency to rejuvenate recipients) seems to be a positive phenomenon. New information expands and enriches consciousness, which, of course, is a positive fact. On the other hand, the passion for virtual games, which gives a feeling of “spare” lives, “fallback options” for building one’s own destiny, not only reduces the feeling of real risks, but also reality as such. It makes children and adolescents extremely vulnerable when stressful, adverse life situations arise. The advantages include, first of all, the removal of geographical and social barriers of communication and the development of new ethical standards of communication. The disadvantages are a possible loss of work and a reduction in the number of vital skills and abilities that the Internet performs.

The advantages are manifested in choosing options for network communication where personal preferences show the value of the present. This explains, for example, the passion for streaming video, thanks to live broadcasts and Snapchat, the user appears as he is with all his advantages and disadvantages. If posts on FB and Instagram represent retouched images and specially selected moments of life, streaming video services show a real picture of the world where you can share your state, mood, regardless of whether it is good or bad. The appearance of the “transparency” function also supports the aspiration for the present. The ability to show your whole life on-line to other users, according to the opinion of many young people, keeps them in constant tone. Constant observation from the outside, instant assessment of your actions (likes, comments) help, in their opinion, to become better, but at the same time the personal space disappears, more precisely, its everyday barrier is significantly narrowed. Therefore, this position clearly cannot be comfortable for some young people, reducing their emotional well-being and self-esteem.

Real and virtual self-descriptions

In an information and transitive society, technological changes are faster than social and mental ones, and a technologically rich digital environment is fundamentally changing the human world, creating a fundamentally new socialization environment. Important is the fact of changes in the nature and mechanisms of communications, when network, horizontal communications have changed hierarchical. In general, significant transformations in the mechanisms and functioning of the processes of socialization and communication, the formation of identity and world-image had a huge impact on the development of the personality of young people. The development of information technology and transitivity is becoming a kind of trigger that activates the processes of individualization and the formation of subjectivity, which allows us to talk about personal development as a priority in the modern information technology society.

In recent decades, not only people’s perception of the world, but also their self-descriptions has changed significantly. The share of civic and linguistic identities decreases, but the role identity is significantly increased, and all age groups of respondents, especially older adolescents, consider (and evaluate) themselves precisely from the point of view of conformity / inconsistency with the assumed social roles in large rather than small (for example, in family) groups.

With the increasing role of ethnic identity, the value of sociocultural decreases and the value of personal identity grow. This tendency begins to appear even in older preschool age. At the same time, the national rather than cultural or linguistic component is beginning to occupy an increasingly important place in ethnic identity. Extremely significant are the results showing that even compared to students, children are much more committed to the individualistic standard of life than to collectivism.

While data on informational preferences and confidence to the Internet retain their tendency toward the priority of the Internet and social networks over all other sources of information, materials revealing the significance of self-descriptions related to the Internet have changed significantly in the last two years (see fig. 1 ).

At the same time, remains the tendency towards personalization, which has clearly manifested itself in different regions in the last 3-4 years. The data obtained in recent studies in 2019 showed a significant increase in personal identity in the overall structure of youth identity (Fig. 2).

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