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At any age The child should ideally Get a smart watch? In China, parents buy them for their children as young as five years old. Adults want to be able to contact their children and track their location down to a specific floor of the building. But that’s not why kids are clamoring for devices, especially ones made by a company called Xiaotiancai, which translates to Little Genius in English.
The watches, which launched in 2015 and cost up to $330, are a gateway to an elaborate world that blends social engagement with relentless competition. Kids can use the watches to buy snacks from local stores, chat and share videos with friends, play games, and of course stay in touch with their families. But the main activity is to accumulate as many “likes” as possible on the profile page to be viewed. After all, Chinese media have reported on kids buying robots to collect their numbers, hacking watches to purge their enemies, and sometimes finding romantic partners. According to technology research firm Counterpoint Research, Little Genius accounts for nearly half of the global market share for children’s smartwatches.
Status games
Over the past decade, Little Genius has discovered ways to manipulate almost every measurable activity in a child’s life, from playing ping-pong, posting updates, and the list goes on. Earning more experience points levels kids up, increasing the number of likes they can send to friends. It’s a game of reciprocity, send me a like, I’ll return the favor. An 18-year-old recently told Chinese media that she was struggling to make friends until four years ago when a classmate invited her to join the little genius’s social circle. She has received more than a million likes and has become a minor celebrity on the platform. She said that she met her three friends through the watch, and broke up with two of them because they asked her to send sexy pictures.
High numbers of likes have become a kind of status symbol. Some avid Little Genius users have taken to RedNote (or Xiaohongshu), a prominent Chinese social media app, to find new friends and collect more likes and badges. As the tutorial videos on the app explain, low-level users can only give five likes per day to any one friend; Higher ranking users can give 20 friends. Since the watch limits its owner to a total of 150 friends, children are motivated to maximize the number of their high-ranking friends. In contrast, low-status children are forced to engage in bizarre competitive behaviors in order not to be abandoned by higher-status friends.
said Ivy Yang, founder of New York-based consulting firm Wavelet Strategy, who… lesson Little genius. “They have a whole world.” But Yang expressed reservations about how the watch seemed like an item of friendship. “It’s just very transactional,” she adds.
Participation Hacks
On RedNote/Xiaohongshu, people are posting videos about circumventing Little Genius’ daily like limits, with titles like “World’s First! Unlimited Likes on Little Genius’ New Homepage!” Competitive pressure has also given rise to companies promising to help children boost their standards. Some high profile users are selling their old accounts. Others sell bots that send likes or offer to help keep accounts active while the watch owner is in class.
Get enough likes – say, 800,000 – and you’ll become a “big person” in the Little Genius community. Last month, a Chinese media outlet reported that a 17-year-old girl with more than 2 million likes used her online influence to sell bots and old accounts, earning her more than $8,000 in one year. Although she enjoyed the fame the smartwatch brought her, she said she left the platform after getting into fights with other Little Genius “big people” and facing online bullying.
In September, based in Beijing organized China’s Child Safety Emergency Response has warned parents that children wearing Little Genius watches are at risk of developing dangerous relationships or falling victim to scams. Officials have also raised the alarm about these hidden corners of the Little Genius world. The Chinese government has begun drafting national safety standards for children’s watches, following growing concerns about internet addiction, inappropriate content for children, and overspending via the hourly pay function. The company did not respond to requests for comment.