MP Mikhail Ivanov, 51, has suggested childless couple should be forced into “digital abstinence” – banning them from social media between 11pm and 2am – in the hopes it will help spark their passion for each other
Childless Russian couples should be banned from accessing social media late at night in a bid to encourage them to have sex and start families, according to a pro-Putin politician. The madcap plan for “digital abstinence” comes from the mind of Mikhail Ivanov, 51, a regional MP in region Bryansk which borders Ukraine.
If the scheme is implemented, the Russian state would switch off the couples’ access to social media each night from 11pm to 2am. This is the latest bizarre scheme to meet Vladimir Putin’s order to boost the flagging birth rate in Russia and help bring back ‘strong Russian families’.
“If young people spend nights on their phones instead of paying attention to each other, then this is a road to nowhere,” said Ivanov, deputy head of the pro-dictator World Russian People’s Council which seeks a return to the Kremlin’s empire.
“Russia has always been famous for its strong families, and our task is to bring back this tradition. If this requires temporarily restricting access to entertainment content at a late hour, then this is not a large price to pay for the future of the nation.”
He also wants psychologists to teach couples “the importance of live communication and a conscious approach to creating a family”.
Critics say the Russian population is plummeting because couples are against having children in the middle or a war, which has also killed an estimated 250,000 people. But Ivanov, married with children, believes social media is the problem.
“The Internet has become a new form of addiction that corrodes the foundations of the family,” he said. “Young people, instead of communicating with each other, building relationships and thinking about children, spend hours scrolling through the feed, playing games or watching TV series.
“This is not just a bad habit, it is a threat to the demographic security of the country. We must create conditions in which couples will have an incentive to return to real communication and conscious parenting.”
Meanwhile, a Kremlin-friendly MP has suggested giving workers one week’s paid leave a year to procreate. An annual “demographic week” would meet Putin’s urgent demand to boost Russia’s shrinking population level, according to Georgy Arapov, 25.
“For many citizens it would be a rare opportunity to stop, breathe out, recover from stress and come to that internal state that doctors and psychologists call optimal for making a decision to have a child,” said Arapov, Russia’s youngest MP.
Another scheme for a tax on childlessness has been proposed by the Russian Orthodox Church, aiming to stigmatise “sick” men in their 40s who fail to father babies. This was proposed by pro-Putin archpriest and propagandist Andrei Tkachev, 55.