The authors analyze the problems of online educational discourse in the context of the linguocognitive conflict of the «pre-digital» and «digital generations» in connection with mediated communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, society has actualized hidden socio-cultural conflicts that have increased the disharmonious influence on the implementation of online educational discourse in a situation of prolonged self-isolation and lockdowns. The authors distinguish a separate subtype of educational discourse-online educational discourse, it is the result of an interactive process of interaction of subjects in an indirect educational space of an online format, within which intercultural, interpersonal communication, a diverse verbal-paraverbal exchange of information using digital means of communication is carried out. At the same time, the possibilities of the language of the participants of educational communication are evaluated in the context of expressing their communicative intentions. The situation of the pandemic has updated the features in the decoding of information in the «digital generation». The specifics of the speech-thinking activity of the «digital generation» are a pseudo-psychopatholinguistic phenomenon, which requires new approaches to online educational discourse in the formation of competencies. The new situation requires the allocation of other parameters for the psychodiagnostics of norm and pathology in the work of the language and brain. Humanity is looking for compromises for the full-fledged formation of various competencies based on language, using online educational dialogue as optimal in terms of survival during a pandemic. The specifics of the language behavior of the «digital generation» reflect a different type of thinking than that of the representatives of the «pre-digital generation». The article reflects the results of an international study on the formation of students 'communicative competence using online educational discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved