Social Responsibility and Infantilism of Modern Youth

The article examines modern social phenomena related to the characteristics of youth: social responsibility and infantilism. The reasons for this are the variability of the world, its nonlinearity and the complexity of predict ability of tomorrow, as well as the complexity of choosing personal attitudes for social development in the context of constant social change. The theoretical understanding of these processes is substantiated through the infl u ence of external conditions, a conscious assessment of one’s future, socio-demographic modeling, moral, ethical and value changes, as well as the dominant strategies of social destruction and addiction in society. A defi nition of social responsibility and infantilism is given. The aim of the work is to study the transformation of social youth in the aspect of social responsibility and infantilism through the prism of social inconstancy. The results of quantitative (questionnaire survey, n = 1500) and qualitative (expert interview, n–15) studies are presented, which show the distribution of socially responsible and infantile youth in modern Russia. The meanings of social responsibility are assessed by respondents from the position of social initiative, civic patriotism, pragmatic calculation or their absence in the case of infantilism. Infantile youth assess social responsibility in negative contexts: people who have nothing to do, fanatics, easily controlled people who are manipulated by someone. The value-ideological confl ict of diff erent models of social development and the possibilities of building individual models of adaptation to new living conditions, through building social capital, personal interests and self-development, is indicated. The foundations of infantilism, based on a lack of faith in one’s own strength, reliance on support from other people, and the desire to live here and now are studied. We identify the reasons for such diverse development of young people and off er the options for increasing their social responsibility. The prospects for studying this topic are the ideological transformations of young people, activity and passivity in relation to their lives and fate, manifestations of will and humility in personal and social development, and the study of factors that contribute to these transformations in time and space.