The reason that young people are called young is because they do not live according to old stereotypes and canons but are able to have fun and take the best from life. However, one can have fun in different ways. While only ten years ago young people would read fiction, invite friends to come over, write letters to their family in other parts of the country, and received great pleasure from those activities, now they have the Internet. It takes such a big place in the lives of many young Ukrainians that psychologists began to sound the alarm that computer addiction is spreading throughout Ukraine. People enjoy living in virtual reality so much that life in the real world losses interest for them. The reason why it is not interesting for them is because they simply don’t know how to act in it: how to communicate verbally, how to solve conflicts, how to love or to be angry. That is why, if parents buy their kid a computer as a present and think that they are doing something big and important, they are making a huge mistake.
Instead, sociological research proves that because of the spread of the Internet, things like cinema, theater, bars and discos, watching sports games, working in a garden, or simply listening to the radio gradually become irrelevant and unfashionable. The experts from the Foundation Democratic Initiatives, which conducted a survey among young people about how their leisure time quality changed in 2003 through 2009, say that only 20 percent of young people still read books, newspapers, and magazines, while the popularity of Internet in six years grew from two to nearly 30 percent. What are the reasons for such changes and what social consequences can result of them was the topic of The Day’s conversation with the research advisor of the Democratic Initiatives fund, Ph.D. in Philosophy, Iryna BEKESHKINA.
Mrs. Bekeshkina how would you explain such cardinal changes in the quality of leisure time of young people? What factors influence it?
“First of all it is caused by the influence and development of the Internet. Back in 2002 it wasn’t as popular in Ukraine. Today nearly the half of all respondents use it. However, the first place is still watching TV programs. The number of fans of this kind of leisure remained nearly the same (76 percent). However, the use of other kinds of mass media has changed significantly. The number of young people who listen to the radio dropped rapidly from 41 to 19 percent. The same goes for the press. The number of those who read newspapers fell by 10 percent (in 2003 it was 40 percent). Young people choose the Internet because it is interesting for them. While in 2003 only two percent of Ukrainians spent time using the Internet, now it is nearly the most popular way of spending their free time for 27 percent of Ukrainians. Instead of five to ten percent, now it is 15 to 25 percent of young people who play computer games. The Internet also actively changes the ways of communication. People receive and send messages via e-mail, communicate in social networks, in chats, on forums, and blogs, meet each other on dating sites. “Internetization” changes life to a great extent. Firstly, a person can browse the Internet from all over the world if he knows a foreign language. Secondly, it provides an opportunity to form on-line communities, get together with others, and create various groups. There are, of course, also downsides of that — reduction of physical activity and, therefore poor health. Another kind of leisure that has changed rapidly is reading fiction. Before nearly 40 percent of young people were fond of it, today only half of those still are. This is again the influence of the Internet, to which this very kind of activity is transferred. It is hard to say to what extent it changes the quality of reading. However, we can already feel some of those changes. For example, I am an employer and notice that young people write much worse nowadays.
“When people read a newspaper the process of gradual development of logic takes place while on the Internet and on television they can only grasp a piece of news or some part of information but do not really think it over.”
It appears then that the main reason that young people’s priorities have changed so much is the Internet. Let’s imagine that we never had it. Would there be such cardinal changes then?
“I think that it would be so, because in comparison with 2002 and 2003 people are now better off. There are more opportunities to go to clubs, cinema, have the kinds of leisure that require a certain amount of money. That is why the traditional recreation time like, for example, reading an interesting book or making something with one’s own hands would gradually move to sidelines. With time the priorities in terms of leisure connected with communication have also somewhat changed. Young people meet their friends outside their homes as it was before, however the kind of communication when somebody invites guests or goes to visit friends has lost its popularity among Ukrainians, and now only 39 percent still do these things (six years ago there were 46 percent).”
How would you characterize modern Ukrainian youth judging from the results of the research?
“Our young people are different. But if we compare them to young people from Russia or Azerbaijan we would see that Ukrainians are more skeptical. The negativism in Georgia now has reached a level of person’s estrangement from society. That is because people do not trust political institutions or organizations (by the way Ukrainian youth also does not trust political parties) but even social institutions like the police. Despite all the TV series being broadcast in order to show how the police fights for justice, the level of distrust is high, obviously because personal experience prevails. In general young people in Ukraine trust themselves, friends, family and nobody else. Thus, our young people are very skeptical and distrustful. There is a small interest in politics but no reflection on practical actions. Therefore, the level of interest in civic activity is extremely low.”
The research results show that young people go to bars and discos more rarely, not to mention the decrease of interest in sports. Why did young people become so passive and is it possible to bring them back to a more active life style by, for example, creating regional programs?
“It is greatly caused by disappointment in one’s efforts. If to think of the time of the Orange Revolution, I can remember the streets of Kyiv full of cheerful, inspired young people, and then it turned out that somebody took advantage of them and that was it. We have very active young people, but they are still a minority. I think that there are several reasons for that, one of which is the low civic activity not only regarding the young generation but also older people. People do not see the possibility of changing something for the better by their efforts. It is the same as hitting a wall with your head. It is better to deal with your friends, family, and your own life. Another factor is the influence of the position of mass media, because it is in fact possible to change something with one’s own effort. There is a great number of examples of how it worked, especially on a local level, when some decisions were canceled under the public pressure. But we do not know about it because it was not covered in the mass media. What is not on the TV, what is not in the newspaper, does not exist for a community, people simply do not know about it.
“What concerns the improvement of youth activity, we simply do not have state programs for that. Youth program is a program of future development of the society. Even though it may sound banal, it is obvious that the future will be built by young people. We have too few serious programs which would give young people an opportunity to spend their free time more rationally. We can see that there are less and less stadiums now. It is expensive to practice sports. In Soviet times we all were involved in something; I can remember that all my classmates were attending some kind of sports groups. Nowadays it all costs money. If we would compare our young people with, let’s say, Americans we would see that they jog in the morning, spend their free time actively, while we don’t have that.”
If young people continue to live in the state of disappointment and passivity what could be the social consequences?
“We can already feel the consequences when we see that at the local elections the authorities are elected mainly by pensioners. Firstly, the number of young people is smaller that that of people of pensioner age. Secondly, young people do not go to elections as much. The young people today took an indifferent position regarding the fact that one should fight for the life he wants. We are gradually going back to what we call ‘sovok.’ Today we are not moving towards Europe the way we did, even if it was rather slowly. By saying Europe, I mean European values and not some concrete countries. Those values are respect for citizens, laws, and creating the conditions when a person is in the center of the society. We are now moving away from that and are going more towards the Russian model.”
Are young people ready to take an initiative to lead Ukraine back to Europe?
“When we speak about youth, we mean a certain integrity, but young people, in fact, are very different. There are young people who value democracy and freedom above all. Who were those that risked their lives in Kharkiv in order not to let the trees be cut down? Yong people did that. Who is picketing in Kyiv, defending the city? Young people are. However, the question of how they will manage to involve others, unite the rest of the young people around them, and draw the young people from the past to join them is still open.”
