Escape from the vortex

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily) Updated: 2014-05-10 10:06

It was only a little more than a decade ago when being online felt like a boon and a privilege. Now it seems increasingly like an umbilical cord that cannot be severed. For many, it defines them and presents them in their best light, or so they assume.

Soft or tough, handle with care

The tangled web of cultural niceties

While it is great to be part of a (virtual) community, there's a point when you simply do not want to know more about what's happening in your growing circle, let alone say hello to every one of them on every occasion. Most people are able to adjust and come out of the euphoria of constantly checking on updates and settle into a more healthy balance between the need to communicate and the need for privacy.

If you examine China's weibo (micro blog) scene, the most influential users, such as Yao Chen, are decidedly not the most prolific.

They have learned the art of communicating to a mass audience. But novices tend to treat the platform as a kitchen sink for everything they want to say regardless of who their audience is. I've noticed that people who retweet more than a dozen posts a day are rarely from the media industry. You see, those in my sort of job treat it as work, so the alternative nature of the platform is less important to us.

But I agree that the diligent folks online are good prospects for the media industry. Once they get a taste of completing the workload and beating deadlines, they might lose their enthusiasm as citizen reporters or, more likely, reposters.

Being inundated with options does not mean people will pick the best of them. A new report on the use of mobile Internet by China's young, released by a Chinese technology company, sheds light on the kind of activities most popular with this most active of demographics. There are 140 million people in China who were born in the 1990s. They are from 15 to 24 years old, and 40 percent of them play games for at least one hour a day; an additional 21 percent do it for two hours or longer. Only 8.2 percent of this age group do not play online games.

In addition, these youngsters use their cellphones to watch movies and television shows, making it absolutely clear that the television set's days as the dominating feature of a home are doomed. About 27 percent tune in to their palm-sized entertainment for two hours or more a day. That translates to roughly one feature film or three episodes of a drama series.