DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILDREN'S INTERNET SEGMENT: AGE CHARACTERISTICS IN VARIOUS ELECTRONIC CONTENTS

Abstract

The Internet is an indisputable factor in the development of society, children and teenagers in particular. It becomes our daily companion, some are so immersed in the World Wide Web that they lose their sense of reality. Young people, especially teenagers, are the most impressionable audience, so it is important to know and evaluate the content they are viewing. The article examines surveys from which it is possible to analyze the behaviour of children and adolescents in the Ukrainian-speaking segment of the Internet during the last 20 years. Unfortunately, few such studies were conducted, though they did not provide any answers to the questions about the correspondence between the needs and interests of schoolchildren and the reality of the functioning of electronic children’s content.However, by comparing the existing data, it is possible to form an idea about the activity of children and adolescents in the information space, to identify trends. The authors analyzedthe research conducted in Ukraine from 2002 to 2022. It was established that computer use and access to the Internet grew rapidly, and in 2014 already 62-73% of children and adolescents played Internet games and accessed social networks daily. The 2018 survey showed that all teenagers use or have used the Internet before finishing school. The age when children begin to use the Internet has also decreased. Since the Internet plays a significant role in the lives of children and adolescents, we have identified and recorded the use of all social functions of the content: informational, communicative, recreational, cultural and educational. We can say that young people actively use all the opportunities provided by the worldwide network and prefer electronic media content.