Introduction: the article discusses the problems and practices of using social networks in communication between the population and the authorities and presents discussions about the impact of social networks on the involvement of young people in civic and political activity. The task of forming effective digital models of communication between youth and government in social networks is becoming more urgent. Objectives: to study the involvement of young people in subscriptions to government accounts on social networks. Methods: survey of student and working youth of Yekaterinburg (n=1350) aged 15-35, conducted in September 2023; analysis of federal authorities accounts on the social network Vkontakte (n=22), indicators for September and November 2023 (TardetHunter analysis service and manual page viewing). Results: it is shown that young people are quite actively involved in digital practices of interaction with authorities, but do not use social networks as the main channel of communication with authorities, pay no attention to the presence of government accounts on social networks, and do not consider the presence of social networks to be indicators of authorities’ openness. A typology of youth is presented based on the level of involvement in the number of subscriptions to government agencies. An analysis of subscriber activity on government pages showed a low level of audience involvement. Conclusions: average assessments of the effectiveness of digital channels of interaction with authorities indicate that the vast majority of young people have doubts about their effectiveness; young people prefer a more formalized method even when using digital technologies. Social networks should rather be regarded as a new channel of communication with authorities for those young citizens who are already civically active.