Ideas about real and digital worlds as part of the current worldview of adolescents and parents in a digital society: Possibilities for adaptation

Abstract

The introduction of digital devices into all spheres of life has led to a significant restructuring of our everyday life and the world of the modern person. The real world is increasingly and actively extended by the digital environment, forming a historically unique life in a mixed online and offline reality. Psychology still lacks analyses of the worldview of adolescents most actively socialized in real and virtual spaces and comparisons with perceptions of elder generations that would contribute to understanding the choice of behavioral strategies of different generations and their adaptation to digital transformations. This study compares representations of real and virtual spaces as components of the world picture in adolescents and parents with different levels of user activity, digital competence, and value orientations. The sample was comprised of 282 adolescents aged 14–17 and 337 parents of adolescents of the same age. Adolescents’ pictures of the real and virtual worlds converge, while parents keep these worlds apart in their general system of perceptions. Adolescents and parents have different visions of the virtual world, while they are in common perceptions of the real world. The more time both adolescents and parents spend online, the more positive they perceive the virtual world, which is also characteristic of parents with a high level of digital competence. Adolescents with various value orientations differ in their perceptions of the real world only, while parents differ in their perceptions of both the real world and the virtual world. Thus, compared to the parents’ generation, adolescents, in addition to a generally positive picture of the world and high importance of the real world, also had more positive views of the virtual space and actively adapted to a mixed reality, which could act as a good psychological resource for adapting to major changes and shocks in the pandemic and the transition to distance learning.