Chinese Kids Use Bots to Fake Popularity on Smartwatches
▼ Summary
– Chinese parents buy smartwatches for children as young as five primarily for calling and location tracking, while kids prefer them for social and competitive features.
– Little Genius smartwatches, launched in 2015, dominate the global kids’ market and gamify activities to accumulate likes, fostering a status-driven social environment.
– The platform encourages transactional friendships, where users exchange likes to boost rankings and may engage in hacking or bot usage to increase engagement metrics.
– High like counts grant status as “big shots,” leading some users to monetize their influence by selling accounts or bots, but also exposing them to cyberbullying and conflicts.
– Concerns over internet addiction, scams, and inappropriate content have prompted Chinese authorities to draft safety standards for children’s smartwatches.
Determining the right age for a child’s first smartwatch is a question many parents now face. In China, it’s common to see kids as young as five wearing these devices, primarily for safety and communication with family. However, the appeal for children often centers around features that go far beyond simple location tracking. Watches from the brand Xiaotiancai (Little Genius), launched in 2015 with prices reaching $330, have created a complex digital ecosystem. This environment mixes social networking with intense status competition, where the primary goal for many young users is to amass as many profile “likes” as possible. Reports from Chinese media describe children using bots to artificially inflate their popularity, hacking watches to target rivals, and even forming romantic relationships through the platform. According to Counterpoint Research, Little Genius commands close to half of the worldwide market for children’s smartwatches.
The platform has successfully turned everyday childhood activities into a game. Playing ping pong, sharing updates, and other actions earn experience points that elevate a user’s level. A higher level increases the number of likes a child can distribute to friends each day, creating a system of reciprocal social transactions. One 18-year-old shared her experience with Chinese media, explaining that she struggled with friendships until a classmate introduced her to a Little Genius social circle. She eventually accumulated over a million likes, achieving minor celebrity status on the watch. She also revealed that she met all three of her boyfriends through the device, ending two of those relationships after they pressured her for explicit photos.
A high like count has become a powerful status symbol. Keen users frequently turn to the popular Chinese social app RedNote (Xiaohongshu) to find new, high-level friends, aiming to collect more likes and badges. Video tutorials on the app detail methods to bypass daily like limits. The structure of the platform encourages this behavior; a user can have a maximum of 150 friends, so children feel pressured to cultivate connections with high-ranking peers to maximize their own like intake. This dynamic can leave lower-status users feeling compelled to participate in competitive antics to avoid being dropped by their more popular “friends.”
Ivy Yang, founder of the New York-based consultancy Wavelet Strategy, has studied the Little Genius phenomenon. She notes that children “feel this sense of camaraderie and community. They have a whole world.” However, Yang also voiced concern about the way the watch appears to turn friendship into a commodity, describing the interactions as “just very transactional.”
The intense competition has given rise to a cottage industry focused on gaming the system. On RedNote, users post guides with titles like “First in the world! Unlimited likes on Little Genius new homepage!” Beyond hacking, some businesses sell services to boost a child’s metrics. High-level users may sell their old accounts, while others offer bots that automatically send likes or maintain account activity while the owner is in school.
Reaching a certain threshold, such as 800,000 likes, can earn a user the coveted “big shot” title within the community. A recent media report highlighted a 17-year-old with over two million likes who leveraged her online influence to sell bots and old accounts, making more than $8,000 in a single year. Despite enjoying her platform fame, she eventually left after becoming involved in conflicts with other top users and experiencing cyberbullying.
Safety organizations are raising alarms. In September, the Beijing-based China’s Child Safety Emergency Response warned parents that children using these watches risk forming dangerous relationships or falling for scams. Officials have echoed these concerns about the platform’s unmonitored social spaces. In response to growing worries about internet addiction, inappropriate content, and overspending via the watch’s payment function, the Chinese government has started drafting national safety standards specifically for children’s smartwatches. The company behind Little Genius did not respond to requests for comment on these developments.
(Source: Wired)
