China's youth aware of negative impact of social media

Speakers: Li Ningjing and Sam Duckett

[Photo: Baidu.com] 

A recent report shows that nearly 40% of China's young people born after 1990 have turned off notifications from social media apps due to the perceived negative impact.

The report shows that social media,  especially WeChat, has become more and more popular in the past years among people over the age of 40, while the WeChat use of the "post-90s" generation has slightly decreased, from 94.1 percent to 86.6 percent.

Most of those surveyed for the report mentioned that positive impacts of social media include socializing with acquaintances and taking in more information. However, respondents also noted that social media has caused them to read fewer books, suffer from worse eyesight, sleep less and maintain less privacy, among other concerns.

As a result, 39% of the post 90s generation tries to avoid the negative effects of mobile phone use through measures like turning off app notifications, intentionally limiting the frequency of social media interactions and staying away from social media entirely in certain situations.

The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI.