Cyber socialization as a factor of influence on the social health of student youth in a modern educational environment under the development

particular. It is determined by a diverse 
system of ties and contacts of youth with 
other people, social relations and 
communication. 
Thus, 
the 
social 
component of health reflects social 
connections, resources, interpersonal 
relationships and network contacts [10]. 
Having determined the social 
health of youth with the regard of the 
chosen aspect of the study, it is necessary 
to determine a number of relevant 
concepts, such as social health, cyber 
socialization, cyberspace, risk factors, 
media literacy, and information security 
of youth. 
3. RESEARCH RESULTS AND 
THEIR DISCUSSION 
The fact that the object of the 
study is youth, and the subject is their 
social health in the context of cyber 
socialization, forces us dwelling on the 
conceptualization of the term of “social 
health”. 
When interpreting health, the 
World Health Organization (WHO) 
relies on the social nature of this 
phenomenon. According to 
WHO 
experts, social health is the degree to 
which a person is satisfied with a system 
of social connections and relationships. 
Social health is associated with 
the influence on the personality of other 
people, society as a whole, and depends 
on the place and role of the young person 
in interpersonal relationships [45]. 
Social health reflects the measure of 
social activity, acts as a form of an active 
attitude 
towards 
the 
world, 
the 
individual’s involvement in society, in 
various 
social 
connections 
and 
relationships, 
including 
network 

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interaction in the framework of the 
development of the information society. 
In addition, the view of modern 
sociologists on social health as a 
combination of acquired values, norms 
and standards of behavior is very closely 
related to the process of socialization, 
and this is especially important to take 
into account when studying the social 
health of youth.
One of the first theoretical ideas 
underlying the formation of the category 
of “social health” through the prism of 
the concept of socialization was the idea 
of the types of social interaction between 
people, proposed by P.A. Sorokin [34]. 
The category of “social health” 
of youth combines all aspects of modern 
public 
life: 
social-psychological, 
spiritual-moral, 
socio-economic, 
informational. It follows that social 
health has an indicative character 
accumulating a wide range of social, 
economic, psychological, cultural and 
other 
indicators 
[18], 
including 
indicators that reflect the interaction of a 
person 
with 
the 
information 
environment. 
The fact that social networks 
have firmly been rooted in the social and 
educational life of students, and have 
become a part of everyday practice of 
youth, is evidenced by the Public 
Opinion 
Foundation, according to 
which, in 2014 in Russia, about 90% of 
youth respondents used the Internet [29]. 
The increasing influence of the 
information network environment on 
various spheres of public life is 
accompanied by an increase in the risks 
of their use. Indeed, studies show that 
Network Communities have positive and 
negative factors that influence the social 
health of students. 
What is cyber socialization as a 
process generated by the era of the 
information society? 
It should be noted the category 
of “cyber socialization” (originally - 
virtual computer socialization) emerged 
relatively recently. This category was 
introduced into scientific circulation by 
Russian scientist and social pedagogue 
V.A. 
Pleshakov 
in 
2005. 
Cyber 
socialization is interpreted by V.A. 
Pleshakov as a process of qualitative 
changes in the structure of personality 
self-awareness and its need-motivational 
sphere, "occurring under the influence 
and as a result of a person's use of 
modern information and communication 
and computer technologies in the context 
of assimilation and reproduction of 
culture in the framework of personal 

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life" [26]. Cyber socialization affects the 
process of using the resources of virtual 
space and communication with virtual 
socialization agents [27]. That is, it 
seems possible to define the cyber 
socialization of youth as a virtual 
socializing digital environment. 
Thus, the cyber socialization of 
student youth takes place in the 
cyberspace of a virtual socializing 
Internet environment. Cyberspace means 
the global sphere in the information 
space, characterized as a combination of 
various infrastructures and information 
technologies, including the Internet, 
telecommunication networks, computer 
systems [23]. 
Such a long uncontrolled stay of 
youth in cyberspace entails difficulties in 
everyday communication, hence the risk 
of social health of young people arises 
[23], i.e. disruption of real social 
connections, interpersonal relationships 
and network contacts. 
Currently, 
electronic 
communication, the so-called social 
youth networking, i.e. the phenomenon 
of the emergence and development of a 
system of connections and contacts of 
youth with other people with the help of 
cyberspace, one way or another 
influences their psychosocial health. 
1. According to the online 
survey of 2016, on the website “Children 
of Russia Online”, about 40% of the 
surveyed youth (including students) 
identified themselves as dependent on 
cyberspace; moreover, it takes the 
second place among the demands of 
youth surpassing the need for material 
well-being in terms of significance. 
Currently Russian youth are at the level 
of the most advanced countries in terms 
of the development of youth social 
networking space and even precede them 
in some indicators such as high online 
activity. Moreover, according to an 
online survey, a third of young 
respondents (about 34%) spend on the 
Internet about six hours a day, almost 
uncontrollably [40], which of course 
contributes to the risks of cyber 
socialization and threatens the social 
health of young people. 
Today, the model of cyber 
socialization of youth in the modern 
information society can be outlined in 
the unity of three hypostases: 
1)
as an object of cyber 
socialization (the impact of cyberspace 
on the livelihoods and social health of 
young people); 

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2)
as a subject of cyber 
socialization (meeting the needs of 
young people in cyberspace); 
3)
as victims of unfavorable 
conditions for cyber socialization (the 
dangers of cyberspace and the negative 
consequences for the well-being and 
social health of students). 
The result of cyber socialization 
as a factor in influencing the social 
health of youth is the formation of self-
awareness and life position of youth; 
development of network contacts in 
cyberspace; the formation of those 
features that characterize the new era of 
information and cultural environment. 
Consequently, 
the 
growing 
influence of ICT and cyberspace on the 
socialization of youth is accompanied by 
an increase in the risks of their use, since 
ICTs are not only a universal means of 
communication [6], but also a source of 
risks and threats to the social well-being 
and health of many social groups, and 
especially this applies to young people 
who are characterized by a desire for 
everything new, unusual and unknown. 
The other side of youth cyber 
socialization is the emergence of new 
types and methods of social interaction, 
which are characterized, inter alia, by 
socially 
dangerous 
manifestations. 
These manifestations are expressed, on 
the one hand, in the absence of a system 
of sanctions and control over the 
dissemination of information of any type 
on the Internet, and on the other hand, 
they threaten the mental and social health 
of young generations of Russians. 
However, in describing the 
threats to the social health of youth, one 
cannot ignore the positive impact of 
cyber socialization. 
In a positive sense, information 
and communication technologies are a 
good means of communication and a 
means of improving education (through 
the use of educational Internet resources 
in the educational environment). 
In a negative sense, information 
and communication technologies are a 
source of risks and threats to the social 
well-being and health of many social 
groups, and this is especially true for 
student youth, who are characterized by 
a desire for everything new, unusual and 
unknown. The other side of youth 
“networking” is the emergence of new 
types and methods of social interaction, 
which are characterized, inter alia, by 
socially 
dangerous 
manifestations. 
These manifestations are expressed, on 
the one hand, in the absence of a system 
of sanctions and control over the 

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dissemination of information of any type 
on the Internet, and on the other hand, 
they threaten the mental and social health 
of young generations of Russians [13]. 
Indeed, digital technologies at 
the present stage of the development of 
the information society are almost the 
main 
source 
of 
information, 
communication and socialization of 
modern youth. Among the most popular 
sources 
of 
information, 
young 
respondents name central television 
(61.9%) and the Internet (43.5%), to a 
lesser extent - local television (28.1%) 
and communication with friends and 
relatives (27.6%) [15]. This cyberspace 
provides the young generation with the 
opportunity to fully socialize, to form 
their own views, attitudes and values; it 
contributes to a new way of adapting to 
modern 
social 
conditions 
of 
the 
surrounding reality in a virtual society, 
while reducing the level of social health 
in real space [2]. 
In 
connection 
with 
the 
foregoing, it is advisable to review the 
positive and negative factors of cyber 
socialization that affect the formation of 
the social health of modern students in 
the development of a global information 
society. 
Thus, a number of factors can 
be identified as positive factors of cyber 
socialization: 
1) The emergence of new 
educational ICTs, which significantly 
save the time spent seeking and 
processing academic information [19], 
opening 
up 
access 
to 
numerous 
educational 
portals 
and 
Internet 
resources. 
2) Opportunities for social 
communication and the establishment of 
interpersonal contacts in the process of 
interaction of student youth at the level 
of educational organizations and society 
as a whole. The following facts can be 
cited as an example: in order to reach an 
audience of 50 million people, it took the 
radio 38 years, the television 13 years, 
the Internet 4 years, the iPod 3 years, and 
the Facebook social network only 2 
years. What attracts young people to 
communicate through cyberspace? As a 
survey of social networks users among 
students showed, 36% of them are easier 
to talk about their personality problems 
online, rather than in direct interpersonal 
interaction [21].
3) Opportunities for learning 
the world space [41] at a distance, as they 
say now, remotely, thanks to access to 
global information networks, which in 

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turn eliminates the need to spend 
material resources on a trip. 
4) Opportunities for finding a 
suitable job. The Internet has contributed 
to the emergence of a dozen of new 
professions and thousands of new jobs 
for young people, which, in some ways, 
helps solve the problem of youth 
unemployment. Therefore, for example, 
according to VCIOM, the 10 most 
requested jobs in 2015 did not exist in 
2004. These top ten both in 2014 and at 
present include IT specialists, IT project 
managers, 
engineers 
and 
nanotechnology specialists [39].
5) Opportunities for leisure 
activities. In addition to social networks 
for communication and social contacts, 
there are thousands of blogs, forums, 
chats, online stores, sites with photos, 
music and videos on the Internet. 
In general, after analyzing the 
positive factors of the cyber socialization 
of student youth affecting their social 
health, we can draw the following 
conclusion: 
information 
technology 
makes young people more mobile and 
communicative [14], quickly responding 
to sociocultural and socio-economic 
changes in Russian society, and most 
importantly, able to perceive a large 
amount of diverse information. 
However, 
along 
with 
the 
positive factors of cyber socialization, it 
is obvious that there are negative ones, 
the so-called cyber-socialization risk 
factors affecting the social health of 
Russian youth (and these risk factors, as 
practice shows, are much greater). As 
such, the following information factors 
of riskogenic nature can be identified: 
1) 
Risks 
of 
encountering 
socially destructive and often unlawful, 
information that violates social and 
interpersonal relations of youth in the 
“personality-society” system, which 
poses a threat to the life and social health 
of young people (for example, latent or 
explicit calls for suicide , transport 
deviations, dangerous selfies, etc.) [8]. 
2) Risks of violation of the basic 
functions of socialization, since social 
networks occupy an important part in the 
life of modern youth, because social 
communication on the Internet is the 
main leisure activity of youth. This is 
confirmed by the data of our studies. As 
a result of a sociological poll on the study 
of the factors affecting social health and 
the risk levels of social health of Russian 
students, we found that online chatting is 
a very significant factor in socialization 
for 
the 
student 
youth 
(56.6%
communicate often) [10].

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3) The risk of devaluation of the 
value system in the minds of Russian 
youth because of exaggeration of virtual 
values, the formation of consumer 
attitudes and the devaluation of moral 
behavior: it is known that social 
networks neutralize the basic traditional 
universal values of young people [37]. 
Their negative impact not only on the 
social but also on the mental health of 
youth resulted in the formation of a sense 
of 
permissiveness, 
a 
culture 
of 
aggressiveness, violence and cruelty, a 
distortion of moral principles; poor 
orientation in the real world and inability 
to make smart decisions. 
4) The risks of loss of youth’s 
life 
position, 
independence 
and 
responsibility, and, as a result, the 
formation of a type of infantile 
irresponsible 
personality. 
As 
I.A. 
Boldakova emphasizes, the virtual world 
does not require young people to be 
obliged to take responsibility for their 
actions [1]. Indeed, consuming a huge 
amount of information, youth, due to 
their age characteristics, do not think 
about its contents and the consequences 
of responding to a particular information 
content.
5) The risk of violation of the 
process of inclusion of the individual as 
a competent subject in the system of 
public relations. Youth, staying in the 
virtual space, can meet their needs 
without spending a lot of effort. It is 
easier to realize themselves there, than in 
reality, 
so, 
for 
example, 
M.V. 
Rostovtseva, A.A. Mashanov and Z.V. 
Khokhrin believe that the consequence 
of this is an increase in the level of 
alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide and 
unemployment [30].
6) The risk of displacement and 
the limitations of traditional forms of 
communication, 
as 
well 
as 
the 
substitution of real social connections 
and 
relations 
to 
virtual. 
As 
a 
consequence of this, a negative impact 
on the social health of youth is the 
occurrence of risks of limiting emotional 
contacts and traditional forms of 
communication, as well as disruption of 
real social communications [11].
7) 
Depreciation, 
impoverishment of the creative thinking 
of young people and a decrease in the 
general cultural level [28]. 
8) The formation of Internet 
addiction and addictive behaviors as a 
result of the impact of cyber information 
deviant and delinquent orientation 
[25,46]. Moreover, the dependence 
because of cyber socialization can be 

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destructive for the social health of youth: 
cyber mania, gambling, film addiction, 
internet 
mania, 
mania 
of 
digital 
technologies. In particular, due to 
dissatisfaction with the real world, 
computer addiction among young people 
is gradually exacerbated, leading to the 
fact that it begins to give preference to 
cyberspace as the most acceptable one.
9) The risk of aggressive 
behaviors, the cultivation of extremist 
sentiments, social tension and conflict in 
the youth environment, which, one way 
or another, violates the process of social 
interaction of youth, thereby adversely 
affecting the quality of social health of 
youth.
10) Change in the behavior of 
young people in conjunction with 
consumer ideology and social disunity.