Virtual Friend - Teenagers in Tatarstan spend a week online, trusting neural networks more than people.

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       Teenagers in Tatarstan spend a day a week online, trusting neural networks more than people

      

      

      

      

      

      

       Teenagers in Tatarstan spend a day a week online, trusting neural networks more than people (photo: shedevrum.ai)

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

      

       As experts calculated, children and teenagers living in Tatarstan spend about 25-30 hours a week online. Time is spent not only on games or communication but also on receiving advice on various issues from AI.

      

       Children and teenagers in Tatarstan spend from 4 to 7.5 hours daily in the virtual space, which totals up to 30 hours a week or a full day completely disconnected from real life. Such alarming data was voiced at a meeting of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan by the Minister for Youth Affairs of the region, Azat Kadyrov. According to the statistics he presented, which is cited by RBC, the most active internet users are boys aged 14 to 17, who spend an average of 5.6 hours online on weekdays, while on weekends this figure rises to 7.7 hours. Girls in the same age group are slightly behind, spending 5.5 hours on social networks and games on weekdays and 7.6 hours on weekends. As they grow older, internet addiction somewhat weakens, and the least time online is spent by men and women aged 30-35. At the same time, Kadyrov emphasized that the uncontrolled spread of artificial intelligence forms in children from a young age an unconditional trust in the digital environment rather than in living people, which harms their psycho-emotional state and can lead to deviant personality development. The head of the agency expressed particular concern that teenagers aged 14-17 are already using neural networks primarily not for studying, as was common before, but for writing posts and messages, with one in five young people using AI as an advisor in various life situations. "Our common task is to teach children how to use this tool correctly," Kadyrov urged. It was previously reported that over the past five years, the number of young people in Tatarstan has decreased by almost 150,000. According to updated data, the number of youth in the Republic of Tatarstan at the beginning of last year, 2025, was exactly one million citizens aged 14 to 35.

      

      

      

      

       Arina Mikhailova

      

      

      

      

      

       Published: 09.06.2026 13:29

       Edited: 09.06.2026 13:29