IMPACT OF MOVIES ON TEENAGERS

Films now account for a large amount of people s media consumption. In Russia, cinema is viewed as a tool for personal and social transformation, contributing to the construction of the Russian audience s viewpoint, as well as their views toward current social concerns. Simultaneously, psychology science continues to debate the effectiveness of cinema impact. Our goal was to gather new evidence on the beneficial impact of films based on particular experimental research, according to the empirical orientation of our approach to the study of mass media influence. The goal was to see if there were any changes in attitudes toward current social concerns among young people, who were the most engaged watchers. Respondents rated their various features before and after seeing the film using a psychosemantic technique that includes 25 items meant to identify attitudes towards senior persons. Significant changes were discovered using a variety of criteria from the motivational, emotional, and cognitive domains. At the same time, significant discrepancies between undergraduate and postgraduate students judgments of the elderly were discovered. Postgraduate students opinions about senior persons improved after watching the film, however undergraduate students negative perceptions worsened. Individual differences among respondents, such as age, educational status as an indicator of individual psychological qualities, and other factors, can explain the opposing tendencies discovered engagement with senior citizens and, as a result, attitudes about senior citizens before beginning to view the film.