Social World of the Personality in the Virtual Networks Era

Abstract

Virtual social networks are an essential part of the modern information society. The influence of this technology on a person’s social life is yet to be evaluated. The aim of our study is to give a well-rounded overview of virtual communication phenomena studies and to analyze the influence of such phenomena on structure and quality of a network of personal contacts as well as possibilities provided by the social networks. For the first time, the phenomenon of “social penmanship” is described in Russian. On the one hand, this means presence of some invariants in the social environment of a person, and on the other hand, the stability of the individual pattern of social ties. The results of recent studies are reviewed, which show that a person’s social and cognitive limitations work in virtual reality.