Social networking in the everyday life of student youth in Western Ukraine

The emergence and intensive development of social networking services (social media) is one of the most unique phenomena of the 21st century. Social networking has become an integral part of everyday practices. The goal of the study was to identify spatial patterns and features of the functioning and development of social networking services, as well as the practice of social networking, among young people in Western Ukraine. The research was based on a survey conducted among geography students from the universities located in the region. There are no significant intraregional fluctuations in the penetration and use of social networking services. The results revealed a sharp dominance of three social media (Instagram, Telegram and Facebook) over the others. The social life of students is characterized by multi-networking. Social networking services have a variety of uses, including the most popular like communication with friends, entertainment and reading the news. The smallest deviations from the regio-nal average values were found for communication with friends, while the biggest differences are typical for creating own content, reading the news and communicating with people abroad.