"Mediаasketizm" as a Practice of Conscious Use of the Internet

Currently, the daily life of young people is undergoing constant transformation and introduction of various digital technologies. The active emergence of various online services and resources that are created to simplify human life and save time, including the proliferation of social networks and instant messengers, on the one hand, really opens up many additional opportunities and ways for young people to quickly, efficiently receive, absorb and spread the necessary information. On the other hand, the problem of over-saturation of the information environment finds its place, which, in turn, leads to emotional fatigue from the necessity of excessively staying online, mixing different spheres of a person’s life and the inability to control their own time resources. In this regard, modern young people feel the need to find their own ways of filtering out unnecessary information, to build boundaries between online and offline, and to build strategies for comfortable existence both in reality and on the Internet. The purpose of the study is to determine the place of the Internet space, in particular social networks and instant messengers, in the lives of modern young people living in the metropolis and by virtue of professional or educational activities associated with the digital environment, and highlighting individual practices of media asceticism or restricting the use of the Internet, using which young people strike a balance between online and offline in their lives.