Mentoring as a factor in reducing loneliness and developing communicative activity in modern teenagers

The relevance of the research topic is due to the need to involve modern teenagers experiencing loneliness in mentoring activities focused on socially significant interaction with other people and development-stimulating communicative activity. The research purpose: to develop and empirically test the effectiveness of a project involving teenagers in mentoring activities to reduce their level of loneliness and develop communicative activity. Research methods: analytical review of scientific sources on loneliness, analysis and generalization of results, design, pedagogical experiment. Results. The project “Important to help” has been developed and implemented, it provides for the gradual involvement of teenagers experiencing loneliness in mentoring activities focused on children from orphanage. The project included 57 children from orphanage (7–8 years old) and 57 teenagers from grades 7–8 of general education institutions (14–15 years old). At the ascertaining stage of the pedagogical experiment, they revealed the following: feelings of loneliness, scarcity of social contacts, preference for virtual communication over real, insufficient communication effectiveness. At the formative stage of the pedagogical experiment, according to the idea of the project, teenagers acted as mentors to the children from orphanage, their interaction was carried out gradually (in stages). At the first stage, the teenagers accompanied the children to school and to additional classes; during the escort process, the teenage mentors communicated with the mentees according to a pre-prepared plan. At the second stage, teenage mentors assisted mentees with homework, at the third stage, they prepared and organized a hiking trip with children, including individual search, research and practical tasks. A comparative analysis of the results of primary and repeated diagnostics using the Mann–Whitney U-test carried out at the control stage of the pedagogical experiment revealed statistically significant positive changes in the levels of manifestation of a subjective feeling of loneliness and the development of communicative activity of teenagers at the ascertaining and control stages of the pedagogical experiment.