Report on Chinese Internet social mentality published

The recently-published Annual Report on the Internet Social Mentality of China provides a helpful analysis of the different mentalities and personalities of the five generations born from the 1950s through the 1990s, China Youth Daily reported.

The report was based on statistics collected by researchers at the Communication and State Governance Center at Fudan University in Shanghai during a two-year study of 1,800 Chinese netizens drawn from various sectors of the population.

The report found that those born in the 1990s are relaxed and optimistic; those born in the 1980s are comparatively conservative and divided; those born in the 1970s are relatively realistic and enterprising; those born in the 1960s are mostly superior and restless, while those born in the 1950s and earlier are generally nostalgic, leisurely and not superior.

Dr. Gui Yong, who was in charge of the project, said that the study's conclusions were based on articles and comments published by the 1,800 netizens on Weibo, Chinese version of Twitter.

The post-1990 generation

Young people born in the 1990s are mostly confident about the county's future development, with 76.7 percent optimistic about politics and 85.7 percent optimistic about the economy, even though they show comparatively low interest in social issues, government activities, and media interactions.

This generation mostly likes to kill time by surfing the Internet. 95.2 percent of those studied recorded their daily life on Weibo, 92.8 percent shared their moods with friends, and 92 percent played online games. These figures ranked first among all the generations studied in the project.

A total of 57.5 percent of subjects from this generation said they feel the pressures of life, compared to 53.3 percent of those born in the 1980s and 39 percent of those born in the 1970s. Although 24.4 percent of the post-1990 generation think of themselves as "poor, short and weak," only 3.4 percent described themselves as "unhappy."