PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY OF STUDENT YOUTH IN THE CONTEXT OF USING NEWS FROM THE MEDIA

Abstract

The article is devoted to the preservation of the student youth’s psychological safety in the conditions of information society. It is revealed where students receive new messages from and how often they use news from the media. It has been established that the main channels for getting new information for students are Internet news sites and the closest social environment (family, friends). In addition, television is widely used as a source of new messages among students. At the same time, a wide social environment (social networking users, classmates, colleagues) is also a source of new messages, but doesn’t have high trust among students. In general, students are either very often or very rarely turn to the media for new messages. It has been shown that the vast majority of students respond to news from the media by raising their sense of danger, which affects their emotional state and their perceptions of the prospects of their own lives. It has been found out that an increase in the sense of danger is accompanied by anxiety state, which is subjectively experienced as tension, anxiety, nervousness. If students tend to react with anxiety to a wide range of life situations, then the feeling of danger will rise and last longer. In general, it has been proved that those students who are characterized by personal anxiety, who actively use news from various media and then repeatedly discuss them in their immediate social environment tend to increase their sense of danger after perceiving news from the media. As a result,  emotional infection occurs among the participants of the discussion, a joint assessment of the event is formed and the criticality regarding the received information decreases. And if different media cover events in a given perspective and hold similar opinions about them, and if these thoughts are common among the immediate environment of a person, students begin to perceive the news as being true and not subject to doubt. It is nat- ural that this leads to students’ deeper feelings and fantasies that they or their family can get into trouble and, consequently, all that affects their perceptions of danger