Informational Overload of Russian Studying Youth: Myth and Reality

Abstract

The article investigates some aspects of the media use of young people in Russia in the current conditions in terms of the information load of young people and their ability to interact with various information flows. The author raises issues of information noise, abundance of information flows, information intoxication – phenomena that often characterize the life in the information age. Through a survey and in-depth interviews, the author checks assumptions about the level of information overload of students, their ability to work with educational and external information, and to protect themselves from manipulative influences from various digital media. The objectives of the study also included correlating the empirical results obtained with the concept of «digital natives», evaluating how applicable it is to the current generation of Russian youth, and how the characteristic features of young people growing up in the digital world affect the process of their media use, causing, among other things, their ability to learn. The results of the survey, as well as an analysis of the pedagogical experience of learning and teaching in Russian universities over the past decades, allowed the author to draw conclusions about the lack of specialized courses in the practice of university teaching that help students learn how to work effectively with multiple information flows and with information in general, as well as the need taking into account the axiological, motivational and practice-oriented components of the media literacy in the development of concepts and strategies for the digital transformation of the Russian education.