The paper researches the possibilities and limitations of coping behaviour in children and adolescents on the Internet and the assistance of significant adults (parental mediation) in the context of the new social situation of development mediated by modern information and communication technologies, in particular, by the Internet. The study based on the EUKidsOnline II project was conducted in 11 regions of 7 federal districts of Russia (1025 “parent-child” pairs).

According to the research results the most common risks include dealing with negative sexual content, fraud and identity theft, meetings with online friends. Features of experiences and coping with risks online depend on the adolescent dominating activity on the web: those focused on their studies are less exposed to the risks mentioned, whereas their feelings are deeper and more enduring, they more frequently seek solutions using passive strategies. Those who fall into “content consumers” category are most exposed to the risk of coming across sexual content on the web as actively use various Internet resources including search engines. They experience fewer negative emotions, more frequently they actively seek to solve the problem almost without offline support.

The opportunity of parental mediation at the present moment is rather insignificant: a strategy of prohibitions associated with reduction of collision risks especially for research of teenagers; while the strategy of positive reinforcement and explanation is used effectively with adolescents doing various things on the Internet, it can be associated with a more realistic risk assessment and child using active coping strategies and social support. According to the data received the Internet could be considered as a complex psychological “instrument” that is internalizing by the child in his/her development. This internalization process determines his/her activities and self-regulation including his/her aptitude to coping with difficult life situations.

This paper discusses diverse theoretical approaches to the study of adolescent personal autonomy, including psychoanalytic approach (A. Freud, M. Mahler, P. Blos), attachment theory (J. Bowlby, Ainsworth, M. P. Crittenden), self-determination theory (E. Deci and R. Ryan), activity approach (A.N. Leontiev, D.A. Leontiev) and developmental approach (El’konin, T.V. Dragunova, L.I. Bozhovich, G.A. Zuckerman, G.V. Burmenskaya). Analysis of the adolescent personal autonomy has demonstrated the diversity of theoretical approaches and empirical research to explain the phenomenology, mechanisms and conditions of developing the complex personality constructs. The study of modern foreign and Russian research has allowed to analyze the main ways of separating from parents and the role of social context in shaping adolescent autonomy.

The paper describes the structure of adolescent personal autonomy construct. During its operationalization, the necessity of including the moral autonomy as part of the value autonomy in the four-tier personal autonomy is emphasized. The significance of parent-child relationship for developing adolescent personal autonomy is outlined. On the one hand, autonomy is represented as a characteristic of the relationship, i.e. social background, and on the other hand, it is the I-image used by a teenager as pattern in relationships with adults and peers. The paper highlights the benefits of the developmental approach in the research of the personal autonomy and presents how to use the concept of social situation development. The developmental approach that considers the social situation of development as a hierarchy of social contexts that determine the vector and development of the key age-dependent features, opens the opportunity of studying the orienting activity in the system of social and interpersonal relations in the development of personal autonomy.

Тhe article describes main semantic components of the image of the world of blind teenagers, reconstructed in the empirical study using the method of fluent graduation of lexical items, which were collected as valid worlds for description of an individual system of meanings and relations with other people of teenagers. The results of mathematical analysis based on the algorithm of multidimensional scaling shown the elicitation of a subject’s consciousness categorical structure and different systems of meanings through which teenagers perceive the world.