It's the best of times. In this age of interconnection, the Internet seems to have become a familiar concept.
We start to connect to our mobile phones almost every day before we wake up from bed, but it's a market where communication between people is infinitely easier than before. On the other hand, China is experiencing an unprecedented trend of singles, with the marriage rate dropping by 30% and the number of singles reaching 200 million. What is the reason? On the eve of Tanabata, we will discuss the issue of "single dogs" in China.
One, the growing single population.
On the Chinese Internet, there are a group of people who claim to be "single dogs." When it comes to love festivals such as Valentine's Day, 520, and Tanabata, they are often the most injured single dogs. They even set up a special festival for themselves, Singles Day (of course, now Double Singles Day). Eleven, it is often regarded as a shopping festival rather than an ordinary single day.
According to a recent report in the Chongqing Morning Post, the singleness rate among marriageable people in China is close to 40%, higher in big cities. Coincidentally, the problem of the single tide is not just China, according to the famous Japanese Research Institute Bogaku data show that the Japanese "lifetime unmarried rate" continues to rise, "super single society" and "single power" is becoming a new label for Japan. The number of married people in Britain has fallen to the lowest level in nearly 150 years as the world has entered the age of singleness, with one in three households in France, 54% of the single population in Berlin, 47.1% of young men aged 30-34 and 32% of young women aged 30-34 in Japan and Stockholm, Sweden, according to Youth Reference. Up to 60%. About 50.2% of Americans over the age of 16 are single, or 124 million 600 thousand. 60 years ago, in the 50s of last century, the rate of marriage among American adults reached 70%.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs also produced a set of supporting data, the Ministry of Civil Affairs released data show that in the first quarter of 2018, the number of marriages in the country 3.17 million pairs, down 5.7% year on year, in which Shanghai, Zhejiang, Tianjin and other economically developed areas, the marriage rate is generally low. The number of married couples in the first quarter of 2018 dropped 29.54%, compared with 4.282 million in the same period five years ago.
The marriage rate is generally low in developed areas such as Beishangguang, among which Shanghai, Zhejiang, Tianjin, Jiangxi and Shandong have the lowest marriage rate. The marriage rate is 0.45%, 0.61%, 0.61%, 0.62% and 0.63% respectively. By contrast, the five provinces with the highest marriage rates are Guizhou, Anhui, Tibet, Qinghai and Henan, with the marriage rates above 0.91%, while the GDP per capita in these areas is relatively low. The marriage rate has the opposite trend with the economic development level.
So, the problem is, in this age of the Internet, the way people communicate with each other is much more convenient than our grandparents and even our grandparents, in our grandparents'generation of love was dependent on the "Goose Biography", a letter to go a month or more. In our parents'generation, if two people are not in one place, a Monday phone call can be said to be the most luxurious thing of the year. Nowadays, not only mobile phones have already entered everyone's hands, people can communicate with each other anytime and anywhere by phone and SMS, but also social software such as Weixin, QQ, strangers, snooping and so on emerge in endlessly. Weixin has almost become a 24-hour online connector for Chinese people, but this is true even if two people in love are in the same place. At both ends of the ball, across the Pacific Ocean, video communication is available at any time. Why is it so convenient to have such a soaring percentage of singletons?
Two, the more developed the Internet, the more single?
From the basic logic, the existence of the Internet should actually promote interpersonal communication, according to our traditional love concept, the closer people are, the more exchanges, the greater the probability of sparks of love will be erased, but in the era of almost unlimited communication, why love has become instead What is the hardest thing to do?
According to the famous Irish Internet economist Mary Aiken's new book, Cyber Psychology, we have an answer. Perhaps not only does the Internet not make love easier, it creates more difficulties for love. The specific reasons are mainly in the following aspects:
One is that the Internet will let the obstacles disappear and leave no romance. Although intimate communication can spark love, separation can ignite love and make it strong. The relationship between two people is built in the short and subtle moments when they know and trust each other. Obstacles can make romance more effective, even when it comes to getting rid of them, and obstacles and intimate collaboration can make two people closer to an intimate alliance by pushing and pulling, and unhindered communication can not only promote love, but even make it pass. The understanding and communication are divided.
The two is the contrast between the perfection of the network and the reality. Asking what is the most popular app for making friends on the Internet is not the usual Weibo or weibo, nor the nail and the hero (social apps in the workplace), but the application of strangers and snooping, strangers and snooping because strangers use it, and social artifacts like speed matching make it so popular.
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