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March marks the one year anniversary of one of the most visited social networks in Runet – www.odnoklassniki.ru, where more than 9 million people – childhood friends, classmates and just old acquaintances – find each other and communicate. The phenomenon of the fantastic popularity of the project is commented on by our experts.
“Find unconditional support and understanding”
Yuri Frolov, developmental psychologist, psychotherapist.This site compensates for the lack of soulfulness, sincerity in our adult and, as a rule, strictly regulated life. We hope to again feel a kindred spirit in a childhood friend even when we are experiencing a crisis in our personal lives, when a partner or grown-up children do not understand us, and acquaintances from the Odnoklassniki website may support and will not wait for explanations. It is easier to turn to the old than to build new connections: it does not require special efforts. Those of us who live intense and internally filled lives do not feel such an urgent need to reanimate old connections in order to again feel the commonality of views, mutual understanding with the people around us.
“Feel the continuity and meaningfulness of your life”
Ekaterina Kadieva, family psychotherapist.It is important for us to feel the continuity of our life – without this we cannot feel the integrity of our own personality, realize the non-randomness of what we have experienced. Perhaps the most obvious way to achieve this goal is to maintain connections that mattered to us in the past. However, the more dynamic our life becomes, the more difficult it is to satisfy this need. This is where sites like Odnoklassniki help us. RU”. Users of this resource don’t tell much about themselves: place of study, work, a couple of photos… But that’s enough: all we really want is to make sure that people from our past really exist, and to feel the connectedness of our own being through this .
“Reconnect with your parents”
Tatyana Bednik, child psychologist.Old friends are eyewitnesses of everything that happened to us in childhood and adolescence. Communicating with them on the site gives us a unique opportunity to once again rejoice at those happy moments and little things in our lives (the smell of rolls in the school cafeteria, the first note, the first trip to the cinema), which seemed to be left in the past. If our parents are no longer with us, then by maintaining relationships with classmates, we seem to preserve a piece of the past order, home life, and as if we are restoring contact with our parents.