Alexei M. Petrov (apetrov@msu.ru) Abstract The rapid diffusion of social networking services (SNS) in the early 2010s transformed the social lives of adolescents worldwide. In Russia, the domestic platform OK.ru (Odnoklassniki) was the most popular SNS for users aged 13‑18 in 2011. This paper investigates how Russian teenage boys constructed digital identities, negotiated peer relationships, and managed privacy on OK.ru during that year. Drawing on a mixed‑methods design—(i) a longitudinal content analysis of 1 200 publicly available profiles (January–December 2011) and (ii) semi‑structured interviews with 45 male high‑school students from three regions—we identify three dominant patterns of participation: (1) Showcase‑oriented networking , (2) Gaming‑mediated interaction , and (3) Offline‑online hybridization . Findings reveal that while OK.ru facilitated a sense of belonging and status signaling, it also reproduced gendered expectations and exposed users to new forms of surveillance. The paper contributes to comparative SNS scholarship by foregrounding a non‑Western platform and highlighting the socio‑cultural specificity of digital adolescence in post‑Soviet contexts.
Alexei M. Petrov¹, Irina S. Kuznetsova², Dmitry L. Sokolov³ boy 2011 ok.ru
¹Department of Sociology, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia ²Institute of Media Studies, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia ³Center for Youth Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia Alexei M