Background. The issue of Internet addiction is being actively discussed in foreign and Russian psychology in two recent decades. However, experts have not developed a common opinion on the concept of ‘Internet addiction’. Therefore different terms are used to refer to disharmonious relationships in the ‘man-Internet’ system: ‘problematic Internet use’, «’excessive Internet use’, ‘compulsive Internet use’, etc. Psychologists show more agreement in the description of symptoms of Internet addiction. Generalization of these features makes it possible to develop tools for psychological assessment of Internet addiction.

Objective is to identify the components of problematic Internet use in adolescence using the questionnaire developed by the authors of this paper, and to describe the relationship of the components of problematic Internet use with using various Internet services.

Design. Based on the analysis of the psychological literature, the symptoms of problematic Internet use were identified. The selected symptoms constituted the content of the questionnaire. Correlation and factor analysis revealed components of problematic Internet use. Relationships between problematic Internet use and using different Internet services were studied.

The sample of the study consisted of 150 people aged 16 to 23 years: 64 high school students and 86 university undergraduates. The data was collected throughout the period from October, 2017 to November, 2017.

Results. The study of symptoms and manifestations of problematic Internet use in high school students and university students allowed to develop a scale of problematic Internet use bringing together five components (super-value of Internet activity, frustration of vital needs, anticipation of accessing the Internet, reducing monitoring time and reducing the significance of events outside the network). The features of using Internet services depending on gender and age are described. Correlations of problematic Internet use with types of activity in a network are established. The most closely components of problematic Internet use are connected with use of communicative (social) services.

Conclusion. The study of problematic Internet use and its components allows us to offer a five-component model of problematic Internet use and describe the relationship of problematic Internet use with Internet services and applications using.

Background. Digital technologies have long become an integral part of everyday life. Internet and Social Networking Sites (SNS) are considered to be one of the socialization institutions along with traditional school and family.

Objective. The research is concerned with studying the peculiarities of teenagers’ social psychological well-being when using SNS. The analysis aims at revealing the impact of demographic, social stratifying and social psychological factors on the type of adolescent self-performance at SNS, their attitude towards regulations of interaction at SNS, their concern about potential risks and also opinions about the effects of SNS socialization on their personality.

Design. The paper is based on the results of 2074 school-aged adolescent survey conducted in 2016 in Moscow region, Russia.

Results. According to the survey, the adolescent well-being when using SNS depends on the type of their self-presentation. The data showed that affective significance of social networking for adolescents who seek the attention of the strangers produces a negative impact on their emotional well-being: those who refer to their SNS profile as “provocative” are more likely to feel the “addiction to virtual interaction and other’s opinions” – 17.4% (mean 7.1%; p≤ .0004), being disturbed by “more popular profiles” – 21,7% (mean 4.2%; p≤ .00001).

Conclusion. The survey showed that nowadays adolescents deem the SNS as the most important communicative field where the fundamental age-related changes take plaare foundce. The tendency to expand social contacts by means of virtual communication was found to produce negative impact on adolescent personal development and social interaction in real life.

The research considers attitudes toward personality traits in online social network (OSN) Vkontakte users’ behaviour. Users’ friends’ activity on a given user’s profile was supposed to be affected by attitudes toward traits of the latter. Within a broader context, the role of metacognitive type of characteristic adaptations as a key element of the five-factor theory of personality is studied. Accordingly, along with attitudes toward traits, other metacognitive characteristic adaptations are examined (e.g. dispositional efficiency, reflected trait, and reflected attitude toward a trait). 1030 undergraduates participated in the study. The research results confirm that extraversion is the most important predictor of OSN behavior among other personality traits. The information presented in this research is obtained using behavioural data instead of more convenient self-reports. Moreover, these behavioural data characterise other users’ (friends’) behaviour while addressing a certain user’s profile. Positive attitudes toward each Big Five traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience) separately affected the number of “Likes” of the avatars representing users’ photographs. Furthermore, revealed correlations between traits and “Likes” were subsequently eliminated by the attitudes toward respective traits. Positive attitudes toward conscientiousness predicted the increase of friends’ number unlike trait conscientiousness. Positive attitude toward agreeableness predicted the increase of the number of posts written by friends on user’s wall unlike trait agreeableness. Attitudes toward traits are argued to affect social environment governed by an individual: one may select those social relationships and