The level of development of digital hygiene skills of modern Russian youth: the results sociological research

Introduction

The key objective of this article is to assess the actual level of formation of digital hygiene skills characteristic of representatives of modern Russian youth. The relevance of the corresponding research idea is given by the specific features of the digitalization of Russian society, which exacerbate the question of the level of formation of the competencies of safe behavior in the information society among young people, which are usually understood as digital hygiene skills. The rapid development of information technologies and their progressive penetration into all new facets of social reality have led to the formation in modern Russian society of a number of new risky trends that are not characteristic of previous periods of its development: activation of cybercrime, virtualization of communication, intensification of replication of false information and other similar processes. At the same time, the unevenness of the process of digitalization of Russian society has led to the fact that the key risk group vulnerable to the influence of the corresponding risks were representatives of the youth: using information technologies much more actively and more diverse than older generations, they are more likely to encounter destructive phenomena that arise and develop on the basis of such technologies.  Therefore, it is natural that over time, the question of whether young people have developed the skills to avoid the risks that arise from the active use of information technology has become increasingly relevant in Russian society.

Nevertheless, despite the obvious relevance of the issue and the articulated interest in its study from both academic sociology and practitioners, the actual level of formation of digital hygiene skills characteristic of representatives of Russian youth still remains unclear. The problem lies in the fact that the active phase of development in this subject area has been outlined only relatively recently, and the prevailing research practice has shown a distinct attraction to theoretical analysis and has only been converted to empirical measurements only to a limited extent. The undoubted achievements in the development of research in this area have been the formation of the primary conceptual foundation for research on digital hygiene of youth, the development of an appropriate categorical apparatus and the formation of a community of scientists interested in studying this issue. However, due to the relative novelty of this research area, the disparate hilarious arguments of scientists about the level of development of digital hygiene skills of young people have not yet had time to receive the necessary empirical verification. In fact, an important analytical contradiction has arisen between the growing popularity of arguments about digital hygiene skills among Russian youth and the relative lack of empirical studies that could support such arguments with factual data. And an obvious step towards overcoming this contradiction may be an appeal to the empirical diagnosis of the level of development of real digital hygiene skills characteristic of modern Russian youth.

This article is devoted to the description of the results of such an empirical diagnosis. Referring to the materials of our own sociological survey conducted among the youth of Yekaterinburg at the end of 2021, we intend to assess the real level of formation of specific digital hygiene skills characteristic of representatives of Russian youth. Analyzing the data from this survey, we hope to contribute to the translation of speculative reasoning about the skills of digital hygiene of Russian youth into a specific plane and contribute to the further development of research in the relevant field. 

Current state of research

Before proceeding to the description of the methodology and results of the conducted sociological research, it will be appropriate to clarify the general logic of understanding digital hygiene, which is characteristic of modern social and humanitarian science. Systematization of current scientific developments in this area will allow us to formulate a working definition of digital hygiene, which we will rely on in the course of further discussions in the framework of the article, as well as to determine a list of specific skills that we will classify as its manifestations.

Research in the field of digital hygiene is a relatively new, but intensively developing area of social and humanitarian science. The intensification of research in this subject area has been outlined only in the last few years, as eloquently evidenced by the dynamics of the number of scientific papers published over the past ten years. It is characteristic, in particular, that, judging by the RSCI database, in 2011-2016 only 17 scientific papers directly or indirectly affecting the problems of digital hygiene were published in Russia, and in 2017-2021 there were already 127 such papers. A similar imbalance in the number of publications over the years is also visible in the database of the international citation system Scopus according to which it is possible to draw conclusions about the vectors of development of the entire world science: if in 2011-2016 only 205 publications devoted to the problems of digital hygiene were indexed in it, then in the next five years their number reached 525. The causes and consequences of such a sharp increase in the interest of social and humanitarian science in the topic of digital hygiene have already been fully analyzed by us in previous publications ^{[15; 16]}. Therefore, we will refrain in this case from going into a detailed discussion of those particular factors that led to the growth of popularity of this topic in the past years. Let us emphasize here only one circumstance of fundamental importance in the context of our work: research in the field of digital hygiene began to develop within the framework of social and humanitarian science only recently, and therefore the analytical traditions of such research are still in the process of formation and formation.

Nevertheless, despite the obvious novelty and incompleteness of the formation of research traditions, the current practice of social and humanitarian research in the field of digital hygiene is a rather multifaceted and rapidly developing scientific direction, within which a whole series of promising analytical approaches have already been identified. The theoretical and methodological revision of current scientific publications on the profile issues allows us to conclude that by now the general idea of digital hygiene has been established in science as a list of rules, compliance with which allows a person to use information technologies relatively safely and minimize the risks associated with their use to solve certain tasks ^[1]. Despite some lack of specificity of such a definition, it quite accurately conveys the general meaningful meaning that researchers put into the concept of "digital hygiene". The context of its use in scientific publications shows that in the vast majority of cases it is actually used to designate a certain list of rules of behavior necessary to minimize the risks of the information society (typical examples of this are seen in the works of D. Thompson ^[29], I. A. Molodtsova and L. P. Slivina ^[12], T. N. Aschel ^[20] and other theorists). However, in the scientific literature there are quite different ideas of researchers about which rules of safe behavior constitute the core of human digital hygiene, and about the risks that can minimize their compliance. Our experience of analyzing current scientific literature shows that several of the most common approaches have emerged in the relevant subject field. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

The first approach. Digital hygiene as a tool of protection against the destructive impact of information flows on the human psyche. According to the logic of this approach, the accelerating development of information technologies and their enhanced integration into the daily life of society create a contradictory and uncomfortable environment for a person: he is surrounded by a multitude of information flows, it is often difficult for him to understand the quality and reliability of which. Digital hygiene is considered in this context as a set of rules, compliance with which allows a person to either learn to avoid interaction with destructive information content, or minimize the impact of such content on their consciousness and behavior. Accordingly, among the specific rules of digital hygiene, proponents of this approach usually name recommendations aimed at working with information: limiting the number of surrounding information flows, regular fact checking, the need for a balanced choice of information resources. It is characteristic that the very logic of this approach to the interpretation of digital hygiene organically develops the classical theories of the information society formulated in the early 2000s and reflected in the works of such researchers as F. Webster ^[19], T. H. Eriksen ^[21], M. Castels ^[23]. Therefore, it is not surprising that this approach to understanding digital hygiene turned out to be widespread both in domestic research practice ^{[11, 13]} and in foreign practice ^{[26, 28]}. At the same time, focusing only on the practices of working with information probably limits the potential of its use and leads to the formation of other interpretations of digital hygiene.

The second approach. Digital hygiene as a system of security measures that allow you to protect yourself from the actions of intruders. Adherents of this approach consider the progressive spread of information technologies as a factor of increasing human vulnerability to the actions of criminal communities capable of using such technologies either to prepare illegal actions or directly to commit them. In turn, digital hygiene, in accordance with the logic of this campaign, is a set of recommendations, compliance with which allows a person to minimize the risk of becoming a victim of such criminal communities. Usually, the relevant studies mention quite specific recommendations that allow a person to ensure their protection: be scrupulous when choosing a password on information resources, refrain from using illegal software, avoid entering their data on unfamiliar resources and adhere to other similar precautions. It must be admitted that such an understanding of digital hygiene has a completely logical and convincing basis: the digitalization of social processes has really contributed to the accumulation in the information space of significant amounts of factual data about almost every person, which can be used both for the preparation of fraudulent actions and for their implementation. And it is natural that studies in which digital hygiene is considered precisely as a system of recommendations aimed at reducing the corresponding risks have turned out to be quite common and in demand in many countries of the world ^{[5, 24, 27]}. However, the heuristic potential of this area of research somewhat limits the narrow interpretation of digital hygiene, which in this case is understood primarily as a system of specific rules to ensure protection from the actions of criminals and does not affect other aspects of the safe use of information technology.

The third approach. Digital hygiene as a list of recommendations to avoid legal and moral and ethical consequences from rash actions in the information space. A characteristic feature of this approach is an accentuated interest in potential problems that a person may face due to the reaction of society and the state to inappropriate actions committed by him using information technology and leading to a violation of established informal norms of behavior or state laws. Within the framework of this logic, digital hygiene is understood as a kind of code of conduct, following which allows a person to avoid committing actions that are most likely to provoke a negative reaction from society and the state. And it is natural that among the specific rules of digital hygiene in this case, recommendations of a moral and ethical nature are usually called: to abandon the use of profanity, to avoid publishing provocative images and statements, to refrain from ambiguous statements that can be interpreted as calls for illegal actions. Our analysis of current scientific literature has shown that at present this approach has become more widespread in domestic research (typical examples of its use are seen in the works of D. A. Bogdanova ^[2], S. V. Kalmykova and E.E. Abushova ^[9], N. G. Romanova ^[14]). Nevertheless, such an idea of digital hygiene is also found in foreign studies (as can be seen from the works of such authors as S. Ward ^[30], as well as N. Kantar and T. V. Binum ^[25]). In general, it can be noted that the focus of this approach on the development of specific proposals to minimize moral, ethical and legal risks has made it quite popular in research practice. However, the narrowness of the interpretation of digital hygiene indicated by this approach limited the potential of its use and contributed to its dissemination mainly within the framework of legal and cultural studies.

The fourth approach. Digital hygiene as a comprehensive system of rules for the use of information technologies aimed at minimizing the typical risks of a digital society. In a sense, this approach to understanding digital hygiene can be called integrative in relation to the previous three. Adherents of this approach move away from the reductionism characteristic of other analytical areas and propose to consider digital hygiene as a system of multidisciplinary rules of behavior in a digital society, compliance with which reduces all the risks associated with the use of information technology, and not just some of them. The formulations of such generalized interpretations of digital hygiene are not found everywhere in the scientific literature, but they are still quite common ^{[8, 22]}. The obvious promise of this approach lies in the declared complexity of understanding digital hygiene and the desire to interpret it precisely as a balanced system of rules for safe behavior in a digital society, and not as a list of specific recommendations for minimizing individual risks. However, at the moment, the potential for the development of research based on such an understanding of digital hygiene is significantly limited by the excessive abstractness of definitions, which can be traced in the works of its adherents: the relevant publications rather emphasize the need to consider digital hygiene as a comprehensive system of rules of conduct, rather than offer a concrete understanding of what elements should be included in such a system (a typical example of such research logic is reflected in the works of V. V. Bulanov ^[3], A. A. Greyskop and A. N. Kuzyashev ^[7], S. V. Ryndina, S. V. Kulikov and K. D. Mikhailova ^[17]). Thus, we can say that this approach to understanding digital hygiene turned out to be promising, but not fully formed.  

We would like to avoid careless generalizations and claims to a comprehensive systematization of the entire spectrum of digital hygiene research that is currently being conducted within the framework of social and humanitarian science. It seems obvious that there are currently other research vectors in this subject field that go beyond the list that was indicated above. Nevertheless, our experience in the analysis of scientific literature indicates that the analytical directions mentioned above have now become the most widespread in the scientific literature, collectively forming a kind of conceptual core of research in this subject area. And we believe that the dominant position of these approaches in the practice of digital hygiene analysis is an indicative phenomenon reflecting the main conceptual complexity of the development of research in this area. In fact, we can say that many of the current studies of digital hygiene rely on reductionist interpretations that reduce it to a narrow list of specific rules of behavior, following which allows a person to minimize one category of risks of the information society, without paying fundamental attention to other categories of such risks. Individual attempts to develop a systematic understanding of digital hygiene have so far led to the formulation of only relatively abstract definitions of this phenomenon, which are poorly amenable to operationalization within the framework of specific research projects. As a result, a contradictory situation has arisen: although the topic of digital hygiene is reflected in the works of many scientists, each of them relies on their own understanding of this phenomenon, which is not always consistent with the position of other researchers.

The experience of analyzing relevant scientific literature tells us about the prospects of a systematic approach to understanding digital hygiene. Despite the fact that currently abstract definitions of digital hygiene are formulated within the framework of this approach, the logic of this analytical direction is, in our opinion, the most convincing and promising. The scale, consistency and dynamism of the risks that a person faces in the realities of the information society require him to be able to exercise caution in many areas at once, and not just in one. Accordingly, it is more correct to consider digital hygiene as a complex system of rules of safe behavior, which is fundamentally not reduced to a list of private recommendations relevant for protection against only one type of potential threats. Therefore, as part of our analysis, we interpreted digital hygiene precisely as a system of rules, following which allows a person to minimize the most common risks arising from the use of information technology. Despite the fundamental breadth of such a definition, relying on it seemed to us the optimal solution in the context of research work. Based on this understanding of digital hygiene, we were able to clarify the intent of our study and determine that its actual purpose should be to assess the formation of skills among Russian youth that allow them to follow a system of rules aimed at minimizing the most common risks that arise when using information technology.

To achieve this goal, we decided to concretize the list of those rules of safe behavior in the information space, compliance with which is most important in the context of the development of digital human hygiene. Summarizing the current scientific work in the relevant field allowed us to identify ten specific rules, the need for compliance with which is most often insisted by specialists engaged in the analysis of digital hygiene: use different passwords on different sites and services; do not enter your account data on suspicious sites; do not follow unverified links from letters and messages; do not install on pirated software; clean your digital space from unnecessary subscriptions; put your computer into sleep mode when the user is not active; if possible, use two-factor authentication; regularly make backups of important files on external media; make complex passwords from letters of different case, symbols and numbers, install and regularly update antivirus. Of course, we understand that this list is based only on our experience in analyzing the literature, and we recognize that it can be supplemented or adjusted in the framework of subsequent studies. Nevertheless, the versatility of the resulting list, as well as its fundamental comparability with the achievements of other scientists ^{[6, 10]}, allowed us to consider it as a promising analytical construct applicable to the realization of the idea of our research.

Thus, the actual logic of the empirical study, which will be discussed below, was reduced to clarifying the readiness of Russian youth to comply with the ten basic rules of digital hygiene, which were determined by us based on the results of theoretical and methodological analysis. The expressed willingness to regularly comply with the relevant rules of behavior was considered by us as a marker of developed digital hygiene skills. Neglect of these rules, on the contrary, was interpreted by us as an indicator of weakness or lack of digital hygiene skills.

 Below we will talk about the methodology and the main substantive results of an empirical study that we carried out based on relevant developments.

Materials and methods

In our subsequent discussions, we will rely on the materials of a sociological study that we carried out on the basis of the Ural Federal University in Yekaterinburg at the end of 2021. The immediate purpose of this study was to assess the level of development of key digital hygiene skills characteristic of representatives of modern Yekaterinburg youth. Let us explain that as part of our research, we considered Yekaterinburg as a private, but indicative case, the analysis of which helped to identify and describe the peculiarities of the moods of young people throughout Russian society. On the one hand, our confidence in the possibility of carrying out such extrapolations was based on the general similarity of the political, economic, cultural and social development of Yekaterinburg and other major Russian cities, which favours the formation of similar moods and patterns of behavior among their residents. On the other hand, we took into account the presence in the scientific literature of references to the successful experience of extrapolating the results of the Yekaterinburg youth study to the All-Russian scale ^{[4, 18]}. Thus, based on a study among young people in Yekaterinburg, we expected to identify and describe the general features of the development of digital hygiene skills typical of Russian youth in general.

The actual form of the study was a questionnaire survey conducted among the youth of the city aged 14 to 29 years. The use of the questionnaire technique seemed to be the optimal solution in the context of the research goal: its heuristic capabilities allowed for a relatively short time to obtain multifaceted and detailed data both on the level of development of digital hygiene skills of young people and on the factors on which such development may depend. To conduct the study, a questionnaire was developed, which included 52 questions aimed at assessing the level of development of the respondents' digital hygiene skills, as well as specifying the general models of their Internet behavior and socio-demographic characteristics that can influence the development of relevant skills. The assessment of the development of digital hygiene skills of the respondents was based on a series of questions aimed at assessing by respondents the regularity with which they strive to comply with each of the ten rules of digital hygiene discussed above. When filling out the questionnaire, they had to assess the degree to which they were inclined to comply with each of the relevant rules, on a conditional scale from "0" to "4", where "0" meant "I never follow this rule", and "4" – "I always follow this rule". 

In total, 504 representatives of Yekaterinburg youth aged from 14 to 29 years were interviewed during this survey. Their selection was based on a quota sampling model based on the criteria of gender, age and area of residence of the respondents. The quota sizes were determined based on official information on the gender and age and district segmentation of the population of Yekaterinburg, which is presented on the official website of the Federal State Statistics Service for the Sverdlovsk Region and the Kurgan Region. The distribution of respondents by quotas was carried out in such a way as to ensure maximum similarity of the sample model with the actual structure of the city's youth at the time of the study. A detailed sample model that was used during the fieldwork in the framework of the study is presented in Table 1.  

Table 1.

The sample used in the study

Let us also explain that the technical organization of field work was based not on the use of the classic handout questionnaire procedure for such studies, but on the use of interactive questionnaire tools based on the GoogleForms service, which respondents filled out without face-to-face contact with the questionnaire. Such a non-standard solution was due to two circumstances. Firstly, reliance on interactive survey tools allowed to optimize the logistics of the organization of the study, as it made it possible to simplify the process of filling out the questionnaire by respondents and reduce the time for transferring the received questionnaire data into a single analytical database. Secondly, the use of interactive technologies made it possible to avoid face-to-face interaction between the researcher and the respondents, which seemed undesirable in an unfavorable epidemiological situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic that accompanied the field work. At the same time, when conducting field work, the same requirements for the organization of data collection were observed, which would have been taken into account when using more classical forms of questioning: the questionnaire was not randomly replicated through open sources, but was addressed to those respondents who met strict sampling criteria. Therefore, the probability of errors caused by the use of such research tools seems to us quite low. Nevertheless, we believe that such a detail is important in the context of describing the design of an empirical study, so we cannot afford to keep silent about it.

The data collected during the study were processed using specialized programs for the analysis of sociological data SPSS 17.0 and Vortex 10.0. When working with the collected data, procedures for constructing tables of one-dimensional and two-dimensional distribution, as well as methods of factor and correlation analysis were used.

Research results

The analysis of the data collected during the study allowed us to draw several remarkable conclusions characterizing the level of development of digital hygiene skills characteristic of modern representatives of Russian youth.

First of all, data analysis has demonstrated that it is indeed correct to consider representatives of Russian youth as a potential risk group vulnerable to typical risks and threats of the information society. The use of information technologies, primarily various Internet resources, has become an important part of their lives and has become an integral element of everyday reality for many of them. The vast majority of the young people we interviewed (94%) use the Internet every day and spend at least 5 hours on average using it every day. The practices of their behavior in the virtual space are fundamentally diverse: on average, each of them names at least 7 goals for which he uses the Internet daily, mentioning among them communication, information search, entertainment, work, study and other options (the distribution of answers to the corresponding question is shown in Figure 1). The active use of the Internet is so integrated into the everyday reality familiar to young people that the prospect of refusing to use it is perceived by them with tension: only 25% of respondents are ready to accept such a prospect painlessly. Moreover, even in the case of an articulated attitude to refuse to use the Internet, young people often do not have a real opportunity to stop using it: 67% of respondents noted that they felt the need to give up using the Internet for a while, but could not do it. Generalization of these disparate indicators allows us to conclude that information technology has become a familiar and integral attribute of the everyday reality of the majority of young people. And in these circumstances, raising the issue of developing digital hygiene skills for young people really looks relevant.

Figure 1. Which of these things do you usually do on the Internet?

(multivariate question, % of respondents)

It is characteristic at the same time that many of the interviewed young people have a certain request to ensure their safety when using the Internet. Many of them take a critical view of the quality of content that is replicated in the virtual space: it is significant that 90% of them are confident in the need for state control over the dissemination of information in it, and 59% are confident that such control will not infringe on their personal freedom. The motivation of those young people who, with varying frequency, feel the desire to temporarily abandon the use of information technology also looks eloquent: more than 50% of them cite as the main reason for such a desire an abundance of aggression and anger in Internet communication, and 32% mention in this context an abundance of unverified and low-quality information that is replicated in the virtual space. Such distributions of responses indicate that many young people have a cautious or even critical attitude to communication, which is based on the use of new information technologies. Despite the fact that almost all young people actively use the Internet, not all of them treat its use as harmless activity that is not associated with the occurrence of certain risks. On the contrary, the analysis shows that many of them perceive their active communication on the Internet as a factor in the occurrence of certain risks. And such sentiments of young people suggest that many of its representatives may have fairly developed digital hygiene skills.  

At the same time, the majority of respondents are confident in their ability to adhere to safe models of using information technologies: an analysis of the survey data showed that 82% of them are convinced of their ability to avoid the main risks arising in the information space. Nevertheless, an analysis of the answers to a series of questions aimed at assessing the regularity of compliance with specific rules of digital hygiene suggests that many young people may exaggerate the degree of their propensity for safe behavior. It was found that the propensity to comply with such rules among many young people is far from evenly developed. And if some of the recommendations aimed at ensuring the security of the use of information technologies are systematically implemented by most of them, then other rules are often ignored. The basic distribution of responses to the relevant questionnaire questions is presented in Table 2.  

Table 2.

Declared frequency of compliance with the rules of safe behavior by respondents (% of the number of respondents)

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