The tourism department of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, launches a live streaming activity together with over 10 mainstream live streaming platforms and domestic media on September 29. (Photo: VCG)

With the rapid rise of social media platforms in China such as Sina Weibo, WeChat official accounts, and TikTok, so-called "self-media" by independent content creators developed at rocket-speed in recent years, and a large number of internet celebrities have emerged as a new but influential force with a huge fan base.

Meanwhile, as juveniles spend more and more time on social media platforms, internet celebrities are gradually influencing or even dominating the impressionable younger generation's opinions and behaviors.

Instead of setting positive examples to teenagers, a group of self-media bloggers misguide the younger generation through their ignorant remarks and reckless behaviors in various ways.

Malicious posts

Yang Kaili, a 20-year-old live streaming star, received a five-day detention for violating the National Anthem Law when singing the Chinese national anthem in a disrespectful manner in a live performance on Huya, a live-streaming platform, the Xinhua News Agency reported recently.

On October 13, another live streaming star belittled China, saying, "If I were Japanese, I would also invade China," and "Chinese are not evolved as well as the Japanese and Koreans from the perspective of evolutionism."

The blogger was criticized by national media before his account in Douyu, another live-streaming platform, was blocked.

All of a sudden, internet celebrities' personal attributes have been put under the spotlight as a public concern, because their language can easily influence their millions of followers.

"In the internet era, many heroes in the wartime have been reinterpreted, and the younger generation can be misguided by reports from Western countries if they don't know about Chinese history," said Wu Ying, a professor with the School of Journalism and Communication of the Shanghai International Study University.

Besides, the tendency of over-entertainment is also a contributing factor. Everything is teased and spoofed online. For example, the song "Yellow River Cantata" was wantonly spoofed in many social media platforms.

In May of this year, the Rage Comics site was shut down for making a 58-second video insulting two martyrs a month after the release of the Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law.

A survey report jointly released by the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), The Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Tencent shows that over 60 percent of juveniles use the internet starting from the age of 6-10, and 24 percent of them use the internet for as long as two to four hours a day.

The internet is spreading both good and bad values intermingled together that are infecting today's young generation with no guiding purpose.

A 2018 white paper on the state of the self-media industry shows that those who were born after 1995 have become the main part of self-media's fan base.

Baobaolaoshi, a Sina Weibo blogger, advocates polygyny and antifeminism in almost every one of his posts, saying things like "a lack of talent in a woman is a virtue," and encouraging women to deliver as many babies as possible, a local media outlet in Jiangsu reported.

A "beautiful breast contest" online initiated by "colouration," a fashion blogger in Sina Weibo with more than 3 million followers, encourages girls to post breast pictures to the comment column under the post, which soon became a soft porn post. 

That post received more than 80,000 comments, 100 times more than the comments the blogger usually sees.

Joint efforts

Liu Wenrong, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, told the Xinmin Weekly that driven by profits, some unscrupulous self-media bloggers exhaust their abilities to take advantage of people's curiosity. The self-media bloggers are driven by rivalry and their natural pursuit of excitement. Juveniles are always their victims. 

Adults have an extensive knowledge base and experience to distinguish the good online content from bad, so schools and families should play a more positive role, said Liu.

A report published by the Nantong Daily urged self-media to abide by the newly released service and management regulations on internet users and official public accounts and to act with restraint and actively spread socialist core values.

"Self-media should spread positive energy," read the report. "Spreading negative energy can bring short-term profit but finds no account in long-term profit. Only by making efforts in enhancing its guiding force, impact and credibility can self-media go far and go well." 

Tencent said on October 26 that measures will be taken to reinforce content and qualification approval and erase vulgar information, according to domestic news portal cyol.com. 

So far, 2,171 accounts have been punished, among them, 1,706 have been blocked or removed, and 465 have had some functions disabled.