At what age Should a child ideally be given a smartwatch? In China, parents buy them for children from the age of five. Adults want to be able to call 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 those made by Xiaotiancai, which means Little Genius in English.
Launched in 2015 and priced up to $330, the watches are a portal into a sophisticated world that combines social commitment with relentless competition. Kids can employ the watches to buy snacks from local stores, chat and share videos with friends, play games and, of course, stay connected with family. However, the main activity is collecting as many “likes” as possible on the watch’s profile page. In extreme cases, Chinese media reports of children buying bots to squeeze their numbers, hacking watches to annoy their enemies, and sometimes even finding romantic partners. According to research firm Counterpoint Research, Little Genius has almost half the share of the global market for astute watches for children.
Status games
Over the past decade, Little Genius has found ways to gamify almost every measurable activity in a child’s life – playing ping-pong, posting updates, and the list goes on. Earning more experience points advances kids to higher levels, which increases the number of likes they can send to friends. It’s a reciprocal game – you send me likes and I will reciprocate. An 18-year-old recently told Chinese media that she had difficulty making friends until a classmate invited her to join the Little Genius social circle four years ago. She gained over a million likes and became a mini-star on the platform. She said she met all three of her boyfriends through the watch, two of whom she broke up with because they asked her to send erotic photos.
A high number of likes has become a kind of status symbol. Some enthusiastic Little Genius users have started using RedNote (or Xiaohongshu), China’s leading social media app, to hunt for modern friends and collect more likes and badges. As the in-app video tutorials explain, low-level users can only give one friend five likes per day; higher ranking users can give away 20 to their friends. Since the watch limits the owner to a total of 150 friends, children are encouraged to maximize their number of friends at a high level. In turn, lower-status children are forced to engage in competitive antics to avoid being abandoned by their higher-ranking friends.
“They feel a sense of camaraderie and community,” said Ivy Yang, founder of Wavelet Strategy, a Up-to-date York consulting firm. studied Little genius. “They have the whole world.” Yang, however, expressed reservations about the way the watch appears to commodify friendship. “It’s just very transactional,” he adds.
Engagement hacks
On RedNote/Xiaohongshu, people are posting videos about circumventing Little Genius’ daily like limits, with the title “World’s First! Unlimited Likes on the New Little Genius Home Page!” Competitive pressures have also spawned companies that promise to aid children improve their scores. Some high-ranking users sell their elderly accounts. Others sell bots that send likes or offer aid keeping accounts busy while the watch’s owner is in class.
Get enough likes – say 800,000 – and you’ll become a “big person” in the Little Genius community. Last month, Chinese media reported that a 17-year-old girl with more than 2 million likes used her online position to sell bots and elderly accounts, earning more than $8,000 a year. While she enjoyed the fame her smartwatch brought her, she stated that she left the platform after she got into a fight with other Little Genius “big players” and faced cyberbullying.
Based in Beijing in September organization China’s Child Safety Emergency Response has warned parents that children wearing Little Genius watches are at risk of developing unsafe relationships or falling victim to fraud. Officials have also raised the alarm about these hidden corners of the Little Genius universe. Amid growing concerns about internet addiction, content inappropriate for children, and overspending through pay-to-watch features, the Chinese government has begun developing national safety standards for children’s watches. The company did not respond to requests for comment.