The number of Dolgan speakers is fairly low among young people. It is older people who can speak the language well. Young people feel discouraged from speaking Dolgan not just by their weak mastery of the language, but by a psychological barrier.
Dolgan is under a serious threat of extinction. The main problem is that the transmission of the language from older generation to the younger has considerably waned. Initially, the positions of the Dolgan language in Taymyr were quite strong: even the data in the latest census (which records a noticeable decrease in numbers of speakers for nearly all the ethnic languages) show that Dolgan is one of the few ethnic languages spoken by representatives of other ethnic groups. In the 21st century, special efforts have to be made to preserve linguistic variety and bolster up minority languages. These efforts must be directed to developing opportunities for using the language in the present-day world: modern music, SNS texting, website in a language etc.