Scholarly record

PARENTSВ’ BELIEFS ABOUT CHILDRENВ’S VIDEO GAMES IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA: В«FULLNESS OF LIFEВ» VERSUS В«QUALITY OF LIFEВ»

Ekaterina Orekh, E. Bogomiagkova

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the analysis of parents’ beliefs about children’s video games in the contemporary Russia. The strategies of prohibition or permission of computer games used by parents rely on different background beliefs. Research of such beliefs as well as values they are based on is the purpose of our work. To do this, we analyzed the discourse of Russian parents of preschool and primary school children in a series of semi-structured interviews on children's video games. Interviews were conducted in 2016-2017 in St. Petersburg. This research involves parents whose children play video games as well as those whose children, for a variety of reasons, do not. Social characteristics of the parents are different. According to our results, parental choices to prohibit or to permit children's video-gaming are based on two main ideas. The first one can be named the idea of "fullness of life", and the second – the idea of "quality of life". The idea of fullness of life is grounded on the view of the world where the main value is variety of activities and eventful saturation of life. The idea of quality of life, in contrast, is rooted in the value of in-depth development of activities, which is evaluated as important and meaningful. As our analysis has shown, Russian parents keep in mind both the ideas when they justify either permission or prohibition of children’s video-gaming activity. We also assume, that the idea of quality of life has a long history and has been popular for several decades, while the idea of fullness of life characterizes the discourse of the modern dynamic and changeable consumer society.

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