ИСТИНА

Introduction. Adolescents’ attitudes towards alcohol use and smoking are determined by various factors. They may affect life beliefs, mental health and psychological well-being. Objectives. To study the interconnection between the attitudes towards alcohol and smoking and life beliefs demonstrated on a social network. Methods. The study analyzed data collected from public domain of the most popular social network in Russia VKontakte. Sample included 22052 network users from the Republic of Tatarstan and Moscow, aged 14 to 18 years. Data extraction was performed using a public API through the programming language R. Results. Adolescents in general showed a more negative attitude to smoking rather than to alcohol. Positive attitudes towards both alcohol and smoking are more common among adolescents from Moscow than among the ones from Tatarstan. The adolescents who chose the categories “career and money” and “fame and influence” as the main thing in life tended to demonstrate positive attitude towards smoking and alcohol. Those adolescents who demonstrated negative attitude to alcohol and smoking much more often chose the categories of “science and research”, “improving the world”, “family and children” as the main thing in life. Conclusions. Attitudes towards alcohol and smoking demonstrated by social network users are mediated by the local sociocultural context and may be viewed as a predictor of different life beliefs. However, the relationship between the attitude towards alcohol use and smoking and the life beliefs is not correlated with cultural context. The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, with the Grant 15-18-00109.