Social well-being of young people: adaptation to social transformation

This article considers the issues of social well-being as an indicator of adaptation to social transformation. The present work describes the dynamics of social attitudes of young population aged 18-29, for the period from 2008 to 2013 in the Vologda Oblast. At present, the attention to young people's problems is increasing due to the fact that federal and regional authorities have to achieve strategic objectives. State structures and public organizations involved in the implementation of youth-related policy create adaptive conditions and accumulate resources to help develop subject qualities in different groups of young people. The expected result from cooperation between the subjects of youth-related policy is represented in the actualization of intellectual, professional-and-labor, demographic, socio-cultural and personal potentials of young people.The author analyzes the assessments of the economic and political situation in the country, financial conditions of families and the general prevailing sentiment of the younger generation in accordance with the basic components of social well-being defined by Ya.N. Krupets. Trends that have been identified in the young people's assessments of political and economic situation of the country suggest that the process of adaptation to changes in these spheres is not entirely successful. The reason for this can be the young age and, consequently, lack of experience in this matter; and also the low level of interest in political and economic spheres of life, lack of competence, which does not allow for assessing the political and economic situation in our country more or less objectively and clearly. On the whole, the dominant sentiments of the younger generation are positive, which suggests quite optimistic attitudes under the conditions of social change, which are explained by age and psychological characteristics of the group under observation. The analysis of financial welfare of families indicates certain difficulties that young people face in this issue, but, despite the presence of negative trends, the situation cannot be called critical, since the proportion of positive ratings prevails.Social adaptation of young people is a multifaceted and complex process and, at the same time, the integral element of socialization process in the given social group. The characteristics of this phenomenon should be studied with the use of the whole system of integrated indicators; and social well-being is one of such indicators.