A true portrayal of Chinese youth: Having real friends, still keen on networking

Preface • No shortage of friends, but still lonely

In the middle of the night, Xiao Philip and a group of friends just came out of the bar, and then dispersed. After a short walk on her own, she stopped to open a stranger's application in her cell phone and picked one of the people who greeted her: "Can you come over and buy me supper now?" When more than 10 minutes later, a taxi stopped by the roadside.

The two people shook their cell phones. Then Xiao Fei boarded, their figure disappeared in the night.

As a north drift, Xiao-Fei is in fact not lack of colleagues and friends. But when she and her friends were partying in the pub, she still felt lonely. The story of Xiao-Fei is also a portrayal of many young Chinese-they have many real-life friends around them, but they are still keen on all forms of social networking.

In the minds of young people looking for warmth or temperature from a small screen, sex, determines is an unavoidable topic.

An outbreak: Open concept and mobile interconnection

"If a man says he is lonely, he is describing a state." If a person says he is lonely, then he is describing a demand. "A Girl like Xiao-Fei, who is so fond of midnight socializing, is so sentimental.

From a more professional point of view, Maslow's theory of demand divides human needs into six levels, namely, physical needs, security needs, social needs, respect for demand, self-realization needs and hyper-self-realization needs.

For the majority of young people living in cities, the two most basic needs are easier to meet, and higher levels of respect and self-realization are still a little out of reach-social is the most urgent and realistic goal.

In the area of social networking and acquaintances, existing products are sufficient to provide complete functionality and a relatively strong chain of relationships. But this is not all that people are socializing today. In the traditional social and internet social times, people have more to do with the topic of sex than the jokes of drunken meat or Internet. The advent of mobile internet to truly let individuals and the network to achieve the same freedom.

Changes in the proportion of premarital sex among Chinese people (data from third party research)

Of course, only these are far from enough. The emergence of a social phenomenon must be the result of the joint action of various forces. Technology is playing the role of catalyst more often.

The change of concept fundamentally brings about the possibility of the initiation of sexual intercourse. With the opening of society and culture, "sexual demand" is no longer a topic to be ashamed of. The report of "The Chinese Sexual health sensation" released by the magazine "Qiu Shi", published by the journal "The Truth Of Truth", shows that compared with 40% in 1994, the proportion of premarital sex in 2012 reached 71.4%, and if separate statistics on the network feedback questionnaire, this proportion will rise to 86.5%-- People no longer equate sex with marriage.

When "social intercourse" is no longer subject to the concept of bondage, the tools to meet people's needs will naturally arise. In essence, almost all communication tools can help with social networking, even if it's just a phone call or even a telegram. The mobile internet is just making it easier and quicker for both sexes to socialize-and, of course, with some degree of proliferation.

But it is also biased to define the entire function of social intercourse as "sexual demand". The social needs of the sexes are diverse, can be attracted to the opposite sex, like, eager to chat with the opposite sex, to become anonymous good friends ... Just as other needs seem too normal, private social interaction between the sexes is widely linked to sex.

Two. Psychology: Curiosity, consolation, trade and expression desire

Although the user composition of different social networking or strangers is inconsistent, if you put aside the quantitative criteria and focus on qualitative analysis, users who are active in such platforms can be divided into four categories:

1. Secret curiosity. This part of the user is mainly young people, including students under the age of 18. This part of the user may not have the most direct psychological or physical intimacy needs, they enter the platform and try to communicate with strangers, more out of the adult world and sexual topics of intense curiosity.

This kind of user's stickiness is relatively poor, also is not the gender social circle Core Group, some people will withdraw gradually after the probation. But thanks to the size of the young population and the speed with which smartphones are becoming more popular with young people, more young people are coming in.

Age distribution of social network users in China (data from Kay)

2. Show yourself. This part of the user is also mainly young people, but the age phase will be slightly larger than the first category. Compared to the social circle of popular and acquaintances, it is easier for strangers to socialize and socialize to show large scale pictures and real or even exaggerated language evaluations. For some of the female users, so that their real or landscaping photos to get more people's praise, itself is a strong psychological satisfaction.

This part of the user will often upload a variety of styles of personal photos, as well as comfortable and even luxurious life scenes. While showing off and satisfying vanity, they often become the target of other strangers (even a few same-sex).

3. Fill the void. Users of this mentality are more reliant on the social tools of strangers. Single young people are more visible – in the absence of enough social activity, young people are increasingly demanding online social networking until they meet emotional comfort and sexual needs. But in some of the third approaches to such users, we can see that the social need for loneliness is not just for single men and women in life, but also for people who are partly married or have a fixed boyfriend or girlfriend.

These users, or because of love life into a boring or crisis to seek more external stimulation, or because a partner between the work too busy, causing the other side received cold. Because of the fetters of real-life relationships, they often choose to use other virtual identities or "s" to engage in a social chain of strangers ' sexual relationships.

4. Desire to trade. The above three groups of users are based on psychological or physical requirements for the sexual interaction of strangers. But beyond that, there is a chain of relationships at the heart of trade, hidden in the social platform of the sexes. Some of the young and beautiful users (male and female), will be beautiful, stature and other capital to the people, in order to get high handsome or white beauty of the favor, or even directly defined as "to ask for package support", and in contrast, it is another class of older users, they are out of the mentality of hunting Yan, looking for young and beautiful heterosexual, to money, In exchange for the package.

Such users are often more picky about social objects. But because of the uncertainty of the social nature of strangers, this part of the user base has also been mixed with a lot of crooks.

Three • Women: more options for mastering gender mobility

The success of many Internet products can not be separated from female users or female topics, especially in social applications. Facebook, which now has a billion of of users, initially started by scoring pictures of girls at school.

There have been experiments: on the same mobile social platform to register a man and a woman two different accounts, with a male account to 30 women to greet, only received 2 replies a day, while the female accounts in a day time received nearly 50 men greeting.

Why is it that women are the dominant force in the social sphere? In fact, men's "social" needs are more intense and tend to be more explicit. In this trend, men in social networks tend to be very attentive to women, while women can choose the subjects they like to communicate among many men.

Based on this view, the number of female users can almost directly determine the activity of the social circle in a social application (whether it is social or private). In this dimension, both sexes are more socially intimate and even more pronounced.

But this is not to say that women lack the need for "gender social". But women's needs are more in the hope of getting more male users ' attention. For this reason, women will want to show their most beautiful side to get more praise, and even in the sexual need to pick a better object.

It is also a major reason for the popularity of image beautification applications along with the flourishing of social networks.

Four • Tools: The evolution of the mobile platform for gender social networking

As mentioned above, virtually any social application has the potential to help users solve "sexual needs," but for a growing social platform, "sex" is not a long-term solution. Some applications reinforce the concept of gender networking in order to gain initial users, but after a healthy growth period, the need for gender networking will be differentiated and more and more normal social needs are emerging. Sexual interaction, though naturally diluted, does not disappear.

From the perspective of the tool evolution of gender demand, the earliest network form is chat room. But because the content is difficult to manage, the form is too monotonous, this online social form quickly decline.

The first social networking site to be labeled "sex demand" is 51.com. His co-founder, Zhang Jianfu, left the 51.com and launched a simple, beautiful project that also took advantage of male psychology: such as looking at more women's photos, hoping to chat more conveniently with female users-and setting fees thresholds on these links.

However, setting thresholds for social links such as albums and chats is not conducive to the expansion of social behavior. Such applications also tend to fall into a single "gender need" type, which is difficult to grow into a universal social platform.

Can be compared to the mo. Before the release of the Stranger, simple in the social field of strangers has done very well, but with the time of the deduction, people quickly forget it, and just remember the mo.

Mo just released, because there is a strong geographical attributes, many people will be positioned in the gender social artifacts. But the official never recognized such a statement. But in terms of product shape and functionality, it does satisfy the user's "gender social needs". Remove geographical information to make it easier to meet offline, "positioning" brings another advantage is "authenticity" and "proximity", so that users can feel the other side of their own.

Mobile terminals have liberalized social and sexual relationships, and positioning information has increased the chances of success in social networking.

But for users who aim only to meet the physiological needs of the sexes, the help that the stranger can offer is not as good as some of the more "proficient" apps. Whether it is simple, beautiful or MO, the initiator of the social is mostly male, that is, men want to chat or meet women. But in this chain of relationships, men do not initially know whether women think the same way, which adds to the difficulty of socializing. Other social applications have focused on solving the problem, typically with domestic so-and-so and foreign Tinder.

Such applications often use a social platform (Twitter or Facebook) to get user information, users can mark people who want to meet or want to happen, and if they want to see you or what happens, they can interact and socialize. But if only one party is interested, there will be no hint-social behavior will not start.

This product design eliminates the temptation phase of gender social interaction as much as possible, saving time costs for both sexes. But because it is too direct, it is often difficult to develop a broader social interaction.

There are also social applications that take advantage of the features of mobile devices, such as voice social applications, whose official slogan is "Just call a stranger," of course, to the same sex or to the opposite sex, only the users themselves know.

It is noteworthy that most of the social products that address "gender needs" are socially based. On the one hand, we have discussed earlier that cultural and social openness has made the concept of gender more liberal. Strangers, on the other hand, seem to be more suited to the fast-food rhythm and more likely to feel safe in a social relationship.

Five • Vigilance: youth, love and daydreaming

Because a large number of users through mobile social products to solve the "gender needs", so there are evil people on these platforms to wait. One of the most typical is the female "wine" to cheat men's money, and men posing high fidelity cheat female feelings and body.

For the user, how to use a social product is personal freedom, but if you often deal with strangers, still need to pay more attention. The Goddess of God may not be for no reason to meet you, the album has a luxury car users, may not be worth tens of millions.

When we seriously discuss "sex", we can't completely ignore emotion. Indeed, there are many young people who look for youth and love through social networks. With the acceleration of urbanization and the rapid pace of life in big cities, the social life of young people is getting smaller, and the real social circle is becoming narrower. When we do not have the time and resources to acquire friendship and love in reality, the network becomes a kind of salvation, and sustenance.

But the more they focus on the social and even sexual needs of the application, the more often the user's physical needs outweigh the emotional needs. And the deduction between social, love, sex and network may be a longer discussion topic.

Do not go to impossible, also don't "very silly very naïve". Clear their own pay and income, reasonable use of the network. When sex is no longer taboo, the greatest protection of freedom is not to abuse it.