The Internet "pig killing plate" has also taken a shot at middle-aged and elderly people

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | Shang Cain Society, author | Lingzhu, edited by | Zima

The impression of middle-aged and elderly people has a very low sense of existence in the online world, but this situation has changed dramatically in the past two years.

Public data shows that since 2012, the speed of the elderly to the Internet is 1.6 times the overall mobile Internet penetration speed, and in recent years, the proportion of middle-aged and elderly netizens has increased significantly.

Love the Internet, chase the trend, shoot videos... Many elderly people no longer serve the elderly, but keep up with the pace of the times and social trends, and many people can clearly perceive that more and more elderly people appear in the APP commonly used in mobile phones. Among them, WEChat, Douyin, Kuaishou and other APPS are catalysts for elderly users to embrace digital life.

More and more middle-aged and elderly people have even become "Internet addicted teenagers", enjoying themselves in major apps such as short videos, communication, games, and K songs.

The silver hair industry, which is closely related to the silver hair group, has also attracted much attention in recent years.

In the general environment, the aging process of the population is accelerating, and the middle-aged and elderly groups will become a huge incremental group of the Internet, they are the must for the Internet head companies, and they are also the key to many innovative companies that benchmark middle-aged and elderly users to leverage the market.

In recent years, many companies focusing on middle-aged and elderly social networking, such as jelly beans, red pine, small rice cakes and other social APP have successively obtained financing, and the market demand for silver-haired groups social networking is also being further tapped, and a battle call to bet on the elderly market has been sounded.

But at the same time, compared with the young people known as "Internet natives", in the face of the strange Internet world, the silver-haired group is obviously struggling to deal with various "unspoken rules", easy to be routine, defrauded, and even "directed" by various Internet products.

The digital divide that has been broken

Fei Xiaotong mentioned from time to time in the book "Native China" that "acquaintance society", people are linked by blood and geography, forming a core circle of strong relationships, which has become the main source of individual social support and belonging. The era in which the middle-aged and elderly groups grew up belonged to the typical Chinese-style "acquaintance society".

However, the continuous advancement of urbanization has made more and more young people leave their hometowns and choose a "mobile" lifestyle, and the squeeze on leisure time by huge work and life pressures has also made them more accustomed to online social networking.

Under this empty nest trend, the number of face-to-face communication between family members is countless, and it is difficult for today's middle-aged and elderly people to limit their communication circles to the scope of "acquaintances", and contact networking has become an indispensable choice.

However, many middle-aged and elderly people have been somewhat "unsatisfied" with the Internet environment, and they are isolated and aphasiad in the thick Internet "siege", and gradually become "digital refugees" who are marginalized by the network society.

Is the Internet era eliminating middle-aged and elderly people? Not necessarily.

"Can't play" and "can't learn" are the core barriers for middle-aged and elderly people to get close to the Internet, but society is rapidly transformed by digitalization, but at the same time, it also coerces middle-aged and elderly people to jump out of their comfort zone, and the strong communication needs with their children and the social needs of their peers force them to move towards the Internet.

The first experience of most middle-aged and elderly people on the Internet is WeChat.

On WeChat, middle-aged and elderly people are more active than the younger generation through voice, video, red envelopes, likes, comments and reprinted articles, breaking through the traditional sense of family life and achieving the purpose of being concerned and emotionally cared for.

But playing WeChat is just a small gap in the network barrier. After the outbreak of the epidemic, the pace of the "digital revolution" has moved forward rapidly, making the middle-aged and elderly people, especially the elderly, who have exhausted the flood force, still too slow.

In order to solve the problem of their Internet access, on November 24, 2020, the General Office of the State Council issued the Implementation Plan on Effectively Solving the Difficulties of the Elderly in Using Intelligent Technology, which specifically aims at service scenarios such as travel, consumption, entertainment, and medical treatment for the elderly, and teaches the elderly the use of digital devices and experience.

In the past two years, under the encouragement of policies, many enterprises have carried out "ageing" transformation of their products, major mobile phone manufacturers have launched mobile phones with large fonts, large volume, large battery capacity, simple operation and other functions, and Internet companies have also launched "elderly models" and "elderly friendly models" that are more suitable for middle-aged and elderly people, pressing the acceleration button for the growth of the number of middle-aged and elderly netizens.

According to CNNIC statistics, as of June 2021, the proportion of Internet users aged 50 and above was 28%, an increase of 5.2 percentage points over June 2020, and it was the fastest growing group among Internet users of all ages.

The embarrassing situation of "net blindness" of middle-aged and elderly people has also changed, and the silver hair market associated with it has changed the situation of low vitality and low potential in previous years, and has become a "sunrise industry", which has successively ushered in the favor of enterprises and capital.

In fact, earlier, the middle-aged and elderly were targeted, starting from the "family version of Taobao" in 2018, various aging versions of the APP have been launched, meituan launched offline ticket booking care version area, today's headlines online headline big character version, Baidu APP enables voice search function and voice broadcast function... Filling the "digital divide" at the technical level.

Nowadays, a large part of the "new elderly" group can not only use mobile phones with ease, but also greatly increase the demand for Internet access, and even some elderly people are addicted to short videos, online games, etc. - before the "60-year-old huajia old lady, playing "Glory of the King" at three o'clock in the morning, using Zhao Yun to take five kills" has caused heated discussion.

The report "Research on Internet Aging in the Post-epidemic Era" released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences mentioned that compared with the survey data in 2017 and 2021, the proportion of elderly people who feel that they cannot live without the Internet has increased by 93.67% from 57.50%.

Based on WeChat, attack and conquer Jitter

Turning the clock back to April 2012, WeChat released version 4.0 and officially launched the "Circle of Friends" function, which captured a large number of new users.

On the occasion of the Spring Festival of the following year, WeChat red envelopes were passed on by word of mouth among relatives and friends, changing the pattern of mobile payment.

Grabbing red envelopes and expressing affection have become new expressions of WeChat users, and the number of WeChat users has grown rapidly to 570 million in 2015 and 770 million in 2016, which quickly covered a large number of middle-aged and elderly people.

Most middle-aged and elderly people regard WeChat as a distribution center for various information, and they have also formed the stereotype that they like to send chicken soup texts in the circle of friends and relatives and friends.

As mentioned in the "Middle-aged and Elderly Internet Life Report", more than 80% of the middle-aged and elderly people will publish love packages in WeChat, like, receive or distribute red envelopes in the circle of friends, nearly 70% will shoot and forward small videos, 25% of middle-aged and elderly people will make mobile phone photo albums, and 20% will make WeChat emoticons.

According to the data revealed by the 2020 WeChat Open Class PRO, as of September 2019, the number of monthly active accounts of WeChat reached 1.151 billion. If you deduct the population under 12 years old and over 70 years old, WeChat has been popularized in every Chinese, including middle-aged and elderly people aged 50-70, as early as four or five years ago.

Of course, the exploration of online social networking by middle-aged and elderly people does not stop at WeChat, if WeChat is the training base for them to touch the network, then Douyin and Kuaishou are the big stage for their online social networking.

Zhou Qian, whose hometown is in the countryside and works in a first-tier city, when she returned home during the holiday, she found that the life and social life and socialization of her parents and seven aunts and eight aunts had long been inseparable from short videos.

Almost every day, they spend an hour or two on Kuaishou or Douyin to brush funny videos, news information, same-city videos, etc., which can both entertain and "make money".

Not only that, the parents' desire to create is also extremely strong, large and small things must be filmed down and sent to Kuaishou, vibrato, from time to time to see likes, reply to messages, enjoy it.

Online public data shows that in recent years, the use of short video applications by users over the age of 40 has increased by 12%, and it is still in a state of high growth.

More and more middle-aged and elderly people come to the front of the stage and begin to record their lives with vibrato, kuaishou, etc., and they are called "the new elderly".

According to the 2021 "Survey Report on the Use of Short Videos for Middle-aged and Elderly People", more than 60% of the middle-aged and elderly people surveyed believe that short videos have "increased the joy of life" for them, and nearly 25% believe that short videos are convenient for them to "pay attention to the dynamics of friends, interact with friends" and "enhance communication with their children."

On the short video platform, many elderly people also like to share, and even become Internet celebrities: Grandpa Beihai, who is fashionable and exquisite every day, Uncle Ben Liang, who sings in the fields, and the fashionable grandma group who lives to be beautiful and old... Even Jigong Grandpa You Benchang is also active on the short video platform, and these elderly Internet celebrities have further subverted the stereotype of the elderly in society.

In the short video platform represented by Douyin and Kuaishou, because there is no increase in young users, middle-aged and elderly users are becoming "a place where soldiers must compete", and the two major social platforms are actively laying out the social ecology of middle-aged and elderly people.

Kuaishou itself contains many middle-aged and elderly Internet celebrities and content, and attaches great importance to health care, square dance, calligraphy and other content in terms of operation to attract middle-aged and elderly users.

The data shows that as early as 2019, the video of Kuaishou Square Dance exceeded 350 million people participating, 80 billion exposures, and 1 billion likes and comments.

And the content about the elderly on Douyin is also gradually keeping up. In fact, middle-aged and elderly users have become an important fan composition of many head accounts of Douyin and Kuaishou, such as the douyin emotional head account "Tu Lei", with fans over 41 years old accounting for 34.68%; and with the food blogger "Face Throwing Sister" who sings while shaking his face, the proportion of fans over 41 years old is as high as 54.71%.

It has to be said that Internet APPS such as Douyin and Kuaishou have become tools for middle-aged and elderly users to socialize and kill time, and they have even become the key objects of APP "anti-addiction".

Silver-haired crowds touted the new product

In the era of the popularity of new consumer products, a lot of attention is directed to the current situation of Z generation young people, the social APP of benchmarking young people is tens of thousands, and the tricks of voice social, soul social, anonymous social and so on are constantly renovated.

In stark contrast, the more popular middle-aged and elderly social circles have always been WeChat, Today's Headlines, Douyin and other participatory APPS for the whole people, and the APP specifically for the elderly group is single and poor.

According to the statistics of Analysys Qianfan, as of August 2021, among the social apps with more than 10,000 people on the whole network, the number of products accounting for 10% of the population aged 41 and over is only 1531.

However, the social needs of middle-aged and elderly people are not necessarily weaker than those of young people, and "disobeying the elderly" is the voice of many people.

The new generation of retirees has put forward higher demand for the quality of life and content entertainment, and also has a strong willingness and consumption ability, they not only have some spare money, but also can arrange their time freely, and have a very strong demand for social networking.

In recent years, systematic demographic changes have provided more fertile soil for middle-aged and elderly social products, in addition to most giants have begun to take care of middle-aged and elderly users, vertical middle-aged and elderly users' platforms have also mushroomed into software malls.

One investor said: "Humans discovered children in the 18th century, women in the 19th century, and older people in the 20th century." In this era, not only did not eliminate the elderly, on the contrary, the middle-aged and elderly people have become an "incremental market" for tapping domestic demand and promoting consumption.

At present, some special middle-aged and elderly APP have emerged on the market, and the first one is the square dance APP that Grandpa and Grandpa like to hear.

In fact, as early as the heyday of the square dance track seven or eight years ago, there were more than sixty square dance apps in the market, but in the end, it did not explore a long-term business model, and the track quickly fell silent.

Among them, the surviving leader Jelly Bean is one of the earliest square dance APP to enter the elderly market, which completed the C round of financing in 2019 and has accumulated $100 million in financing so far.

Its founder, Zhang Yuan, founded the life video website Jelly Bean Network in 2010, and Square Dance is just one of the channels. However, in the absence of deliberate promotion, square dance has become the most played and fastest growing content category on the website, so Jelly Bean has developed into an APP focusing on the elderly group and focusing on online square dance.

In the same year, Xiao Mochi, which focuses on the production of images of the elderly group, completed the D round of financing.

Xiao Mo Cake was originally a production tool for audio albums, in 2015, the Xiao Mo Cake public account launched a video content commemorating the flood fight in 1998, which was turned wildly in the weChat old comrades-in-arms, triggering a large number of users with the same background, and then attracting a large number of users. At that time, the public account had only 40,000 or 50,000 fans, and the video hits reached more than 16 million.

After this outbreak, the small rice cake began to smell the potential of the middle-aged and elderly user market, and then launched the theme of the young people and other rich age-related content, coupled with many users and produced more UGC content with the mark of the times, attracting more people with the same experience to join, forming a chain effect, the proportion of middle-aged and elderly people in the small rice cake users once exceeded 80%.

Since last year, a number of startups focusing on the elderly track have also received financing.

First, in March last year, Gong Cymbal Technology, which focuses on the Silver Hair Entertainment Circuit, completed a Pre-A round of financing of tens of millions of yuan. Shortly after Gong Cymbal Technology received financing, the rice tea commune, a new consumer goods e-commerce brand for the middle-aged and elderly population, also completed a financing of 10 million yuan in July 2021.

At the beginning of January this year, the middle-aged and elderly social APP Red Pine announced the completion of a 100 million yuan A+ round of financing, focusing on the interest community of middle-aged and elderly people.

The interest community is the highlight of the social APP for middle-aged and elderly people. The first element of the meta-universe that was hyped last year is the identification with each other's identity, and it is impossible to avoid the community.

For middle-aged and elderly people, interest and circle layer are two anchor points to meet social satisfaction, so interest courses and UGC content are the mainstream content forms of middle-aged and elderly community products, and at the same time, they must have a certain social entrance.

In August last year, Red Pine Academy launched an APP out of the WeChat ecosystem and renamed it "Red Pine". The interest social network of the Red Pine APP covers hundreds of interest fields such as vocal music, musical instruments, calligraphy, painting, dance, recitation, health, digital, English, tourism, etc., through the construction of the platform "small station" and the way of webmaster operation, to achieve self-propagation and fission to absorb users, so that users can participate in interest social activities in the small station. At present, Red Pine has served more than 10 million retirees and has thousands of webmasters.

The future market potential of middle-aged and elderly users is, of course, not only square dance and interest APP. As the post-60s generation with a higher level of higher education begins to enter retirement life, middle-aged and elderly people will become more fashionable and more stylish in the online world.

The silver-haired economy is in turmoil, more and more entrepreneurs are seeing the possibility of its future, and a battle call to bet on the middle-aged and elderly market has been sounded, and no one wants to be left behind.

Be wary of middle-aged and elderly people being hunted

Opening up new social networks is naturally a good thing for the elderly who are "marginalized by technology". However, behind the good things is also full of dangers.

Compared with the young generation who have long been exposed to the Internet, the silver-haired people who do not have deep access to the Internet have a deeper interest in the virtual network world, so some Internet companies have begun to target middle-aged and elderly people in order to obtain increments.

When middle-aged and elderly people use smart phones, there are often various pop-up windows that show "insufficient memory" and "virus threats", and it is possible to install several APPS unconsciously by clicking into them.

These apps quietly sneak into some middle-aged and elderly mobile phones that do not know much about mobile phone security and maintenance like a virus, and even continue to multiply - click on one, not necessarily attracted by any pop-up window or content, quietly implant several APP, are waiting for them to open one day, contribute some data to the DAU.

Tricking them into downloading apps is not a big deal, and some outlaws have swung their scythes at the elderly.

They have thoroughly studied the psychology of middle-aged and elderly people and laid out a variety of routines for hunting middle-aged and elderly people.

Perhaps in the eyes of some ill-intentioned Internet "veterans", the real likes and anxieties of middle-aged and elderly netizens as "novices" are concentrated in three aspects: one is the feeling that life is close to the end; the other is the persistence of the concept of accumulating less into more; and the third is the lingering sense of loneliness.

Therefore, they sacrificed three types of bait: one is insurance and health care, the other is financial management and red envelopes, and the third is companionship and marriage.

Before the offline there were also insurance, health care products, accompaniment chat, marriage and love, repeatedly took out the wallet of the elderly in the air, but this time, the three major baits have been "digitized" and moved online.

According to media reports, there are elderly people on the application of travel, shopping APP when attracted by some accidental pop-up ads, three clicks two clicks, and finally an insurance, then every month will be automatically deducted without notice, half a year is deducted thousands of yuan, attracting them to click, often "receiving red envelopes" "first month 1 yuan" and other gimmicks.

Some elderly people were encouraged to learn financial management classes, just said that it was free to learn, and as a result, they could not help but persuade to buy "boutique courses" worth nearly 3,000 yuan, and those course contents were copied from the Internet.

There are also accompaniment chat and marriage app that specialize in playing the emotional card, which makes many middle-aged and elderly people fall into it.

The "Aunt Huang and Fake Jin Dong" incident was a stir at that time, and the cause of the incident was that a woman in Jiangxi who was over sixty years old claimed to have met "Jin Dong" on Douyin and even wanted to divorce her current husband and live with him. Of course, this is an oolong incident, but it has led to many cases of fake stars deceiving elderly users.

They publish short videos, steal photos and videos of celebrities and then dubb them, some with accents, the pixels of short videos are not high, and even have poorly skilled cutouts.

Perhaps in the eyes of young people who have been riding in the online world for many years, such deception is not smart. But for the elderly who are not familiar with the network environment, the "fake Jin Dong" of booing and asking for warmth is enough to recruit the elderly with strong emotional needs.

Some time ago, a short video advertisement placed by the middle-aged and elderly social APP "Laiyu" circulating on the Internet caused a lot of controversy.

"No money, no house, no car, see I didn't find my little sister like this, I talked a few times on the 'Come to Meet'... How active are the women above, as long as you go online, there are beautiful women who take the initiative to video chat with you, and talk about whatever you want..."

A middle-aged uncle wrapped his arms around a hot young woman in front of the camera nakedly expressed his experience of hooking up on the 'coming encounter', and the conversation reached the rush to one breath, which was very silky.

What is bizarre is that this kind of "no eye" social software advertisements are not uncommon on short video platforms, although they are criticized, the data is not deceitful, the number of likes is tens of thousands of times, and the social software it promotes is even downloaded nearly 10 million times in the software mall.

But in fact, making friends on these dating software is not so natural. After registering an account with a similar APP, there will be many "beautiful women" who take the initiative to come and chat. But when the chat is getting up, the system will notify the user that they need to recharge gold coins to continue chatting, each message charges 8 gold coins, or you need to charge members to unlock the right.

In daily life, the elderly's dating, blind date needs not only appear on TV, but also emerged on the major Internet social platforms, once encountered such dating software, for some of the middle-aged and elderly people with weak information screening ability, accidentally under the inducement of the platform "a thousand dollars".

Unlike the needs of young people who use strange social apps to match their friends with interests and hobbies, the demand of single silver-haired people for strange social applications is often biased towards the real, towards the direction or trend of "running", and most of them are defenseless in the process of communication. Therefore, in the face of "true love", some middle-aged and elderly people will not hesitate to pay for each other's happiness, which also gives some applications in the market the opportunity to harvest the wallets of middle-aged and elderly people.

In addition to the wanton rampage of scammers, some "fake chicken soup" on WeChat public accounts and short video platforms, and videos that stir up discord have caused the judgment ability of middle-aged and elderly people to plummet.

In watching the video, they cannot separate themselves from the main body of the video, and it is easy to self-substitute, and finally complain to themselves.

Or unnecessary comparison with the main body of the video, the imbalance afterwards leads to internal frustration, which ultimately affects family harmony. There are even videos that focus on the relationship between the elderly and their children, which seem to be reasonable, but actually convey a value that hinders family harmony and is wrong.

Perhaps the virtual online world has allowed today's elderly people to find comfort on mobile phones, and socializing, entertainment, life, etc. seems to be simpler than ever, but the endless routines are often more complex and difficult to distinguish than the real world.

How to use the Internet to meet the survival needs, social needs and emotional needs of the elderly healthily and safely under strict monitoring is what needs to be focused on and put into action in the digital age. At the same time, society also needs to give more emotional care to the elderly and make up for their inner gaps in a healthier way.