Digital socio-cultural environment as an ecosystem of demographic choice

Abstract

The article argues that the rapid spread of digital communications is transforming the space of demographic decision-making by young people, shifting it from traditional social institutions to media platforms, influencers and algorithms of the digital environment. The article aimed to conceptualize the «digital socio-cultural environment» in demography as a multi-layered ecosystem and to describe its internal architecture. The author analyzed secondary empirical data demonstrating the influence of various media systems on the marital, reproductive, and migration attitudes of Russian youth. Methodologically, the work is based on a review of international and Russian literature, aimed not only to summarize the known data, but also to construct or clarify a theoretical model. The empirical data were used, namely secondary analysis of arrays of sociological centers in Russia and other countries, the results of sociological research by Russian scientists. The study resulted in the development of a five-level ecosystem model (infrastructure, platform, discursive-content, interaction, normative) based on a literature review. Operational definitions of the concepts of «media-mediated socialization», «digital socio-cultural environment,» and «ecosystem of demographic choice» are proposed as new categories of demographic analysis. The work demonstrated that digital ecosystem formats have shifted the median of the desired age of first marriage by four years in recent years. At the same time, the share of those for whom one child is the ideal family has decreased from 10 % to 3 % over the past ten years. The conclusions emphasize the need to take into account the ecosystem dimension when developing demographic policy, as well as the potential of digital platforms as channels for targeted rulemaking.