The Issue of Virtual Leisure in the Digital Culture of the 21st Century
Abstract
Virtual leisure is a phenomenon of 21st-century digital culture that transcends the boundaries of everyday life and the multiplicity of communications. The diversity of its forms and types increasingly attracts contemporary man. In this situation, it is important to determine the degree of influence of virtual leisure on individual’s life attitudes. The present article identifies factors behind the active development of virtual leisure, including: (1) dominant mass culture in society, which is aimed at satisfying the needs of an “average” person; (2) consumer model of social existence with the priority of the material over the spiritual; (3) development of digital technologies encompassing all spheres of human activity, including leisure. Virtual leisure has contradictory characteristics. The article identifies positive factors of its influence on value attitudes. Thus, an increase in the volume of virtual leisure gives rise to new interests and needs, i.e., entails a change in value orientations. The intersection of real and virtual worlds in the form of digital leisure expands the possibilities for transforming human meanings and lifestyles. Virtual forms of leisure practices help to construct the individual’s “I.” The changing spatial-temporal circumstances of virtual leisure remove social and other differences between individuals. The negativity of virtual leisure is associated with its role as a means of manipulating people’s thinking and behaviour. Representing a function of virtual leisure, consciousness management is manifested in the unification and integration of a person into a certain social group, orientation towards a certain standard of behaviour, propaganda of a consumer attitude and dominance of hedonistic values. The contradictory nature of the effect of virtual leisure on the individual’s value system requires serious culturological analysis.
Keywords: virtual leisure, leisure activities, digital culture, value orientations, technicalisation of consciousness
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.56620/RM.2026.2.183-193
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