Short Video Addiction amongst Rural Chinese Elders?

It’s an early Monday in Christchurch, which means I must be at IAMCR 2024. I’ll present later in this session, but we begin this session with Linda Kong, whose focus is on the short-video addiction of rural Chinese elders. Young people in China are in fact worried about the substantial increase in the short video watching by elderly Chinese, and there even concerns about short-video addiction.

However, current research is unclear on such addictive patterns; it does not generally focus on Chinese or elderly users, much less both. In China, this is complicated by the traditional culture of filial piety and the demise of the power of elders in a transforming society. This project used grounded theory to uncover patterns in short-video use by elderly rural Chinese users, building on interviews conducted in Zhejiang in 2023.

This revealed emotional stimulation, emotional pleasure, emotional companionship, emotional paralysis, family relationship empowerment, and social relationship empowerment as major categories driving short video use; these can be further combined into broader emotional massage and power relationship categories.

Family relations empowerment enables an opportunity to re-establish respect for the elderly and enhance their cue, social relations empowerment supports the reorganising acquaintance resources and supporting a hook-up society. Emotional massage includes visual, discourse, and emotional massage: it offers a safe addressing of emotional needs. How this plays out in urban rather than rural areas still requires further research, however: anecdotally, there is les short video use here than in rural areas.