Social media also show that the audience of Western applications does not immediately switch to Russian alternatives.
Between the instincts of procreation and self-preservation
Following their recognition as extremist and subsequent ban in Russia in March 2022, the traffic of Facebook and Instagram reduced by more than half. Mediascope reported a decline in the monthly reach of the Russian Facebook segment and Instagram in October 2023 compared to October 2021. Facebook lost 23.2 million users, while Instagram lost 37.2 million. At the same time, this audience has not completely migrated to Russian social media apps. Vkontakte gained 13.2 million users, while Odnoklassniki’s user numbers grew by 3.8 million. Telegram gained the most users, with an increase of 31.5 million. However, the combined total of users on these three social media falls short by 11.9 million compared to the number of people who left Facebook and Instagram.
Furthermore, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, has requested that the social media app not be referred to as Russian, as it lacks servers, developers, legal entities, bank accounts, or offices in the country. At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he discussed his Ukrainian heritage and the reasons for leaving his career in Russia.
“In 2013, the FSB, the Russian security service, demanded that I provide them with the private data of Ukrainian VK users who were protesting against the pro-Russian president.
I refused to fulfil these demands because it would mean betraying our Ukrainian users. As a result, I was fired from the company I founded and forced to leave Russia”.
Belarusian users may be deterred from registering with Russian dating services due to the risk of their personal data and correspondence being accessible to the FSB of the Russian Federation and subsequently to Belarusian law enforcement.
However, you can find a partner not only on dating apps. There are alternatives such as dating chats on Telegram or Facebook groups.
Thus, Belarusians can find a lot of options to replace Tinder. Based on the Russian experience, many users may temporarily stop using dating apps. This could impact not only their personal life, as it may make finding a partner more challenging, but also the overall number of marriages and children born. However, the population in Belarus was rapidly decreasing even before Tinder left.
Money and children
According to official data, there were 55,000 fewer Belarusians in 2022 alone. In 2021, the population decreased by 100,000 people. And in the last 30 years, the loss figures up to one million citizens.
This is due to emigration (the BIC discussed the myths of emigration in another analytical piece) and the fact that those who are having children now are people born around 30 years ago when the country’s birth rate fell dramatically. Actually, in recent years there has been another sharp decline in the rate.
Belstat stopped publishing annual data on the number of newborns in 2020. However, Alena Hashkevich, deputy director of the Mother and Child Scientific Centre for Obstetrics and Gynecology, spoke about the current situation in October last year.