at what age Should a child ideally get a smartwatch? In China, parents are buying these for children as young as five. Adults want to be able to call their kids and trace their location to a specific building floor. 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 portal to an expanded world that combines social engagement with constant competition. Kids can use the watches to buy snacks at local stores, chat and share videos with friends, play games, and of course keep in touch with their family. But the main activity is to accumulate as many “likes” as possible on their watch’s profile page. At the extreme, Chinese media outlets have reported on children who buy bots to learn their numbers, hack watches to trick their enemies and sometimes even find romantic partners. According to tech research firm Counterpoint Research, little geniuses account for almost half of the global market for children’s smartwatches.
status games
Over the past decade, little geniuses have found ways to simplify nearly every measurable activity in a child’s life — playing ping pong, posting updates, the list goes on. Earning more experience points helps kids promote to higher levels, which increases the number of likes they send to their friends. It’s a game of reciprocity – you send me likes, and I’ll return the favor. An 18-year-old girl recently told Chinese media that she struggled to make friends until four years ago, when a classmate invited her to the Little Genius social circle. She received over one million likes and became a mini-celebrity on the platform. She said she met all three of her boyfriends through Watch, two of whom she broke up with because they asked her to send them sexually explicit photos.
High number of likes has become a kind of status symbol. Some enthusiastic Little Genius users have taken to Rednote (or Xiahongshu), a major Chinese social media app, to seek out new friends and collect more likes and badges. As the video tutorial on the app explains, low-level users can only give a single friend five likes a day; High-ranking users can give 20. Because the watch limits its owner to a total of 150 friends, kids are encouraged to max out the number of high-level friends they have. In turn, lower status children are forced to engage in competitive antics so as not to be left out by higher status friends.
“They feel this sense of camaraderie and community,” said Ivy Yang, founder of Wavelet Strategy, a New York-based consultancy who has studied little geniuses. “They have a whole world.” But Yang took issue with the way the watch appeared to be trading a friendship. “It’s very give and take,” she adds.
engagement hire
On RedNote/Xiaohongshu, people post videos on bypassing Little Genius’ daily like limit, such as “First in the world! Unlimited likes on Little Genius’ new homepage!” Competitive pressures have also given rise to businesses that promise to help kids boost their metrics. Some high-ranking users sell 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 become a “big shot” 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 that the smartwatch brought her, she said she left the platform after feuding with other Little Genius “big shots” and facing cyberbullying.
In September, a Beijing-based organization called China Child Safety Emergency Response warned parents that children with Little Genius watches were at risk of developing dangerous relationships or becoming victims of scams. Authorities have also raised concerns about these hidden corners of the Little Genius universe. Following growing concerns over Internet addiction, content inappropriate for children, and excessive spending through the watch payment function, the Chinese government has begun to draft national safety standards for children’s watches. The company did not respond to requests for comment.