Female Professor Claims Gaming Leads To Marriage, But Anime Leads To Single And Childless!

Everyday there’s always something it seems when it comes to:

• The anime industry.
• People criticizing the anime industry.
• Japan.

And things related to all of that shit.

The latest is a female professor who did a study relating to China, who made some claims of her own after the fact.

Many people aren’t happy as you can imagine.

It all started with THIS quote where social media was first criticized as a reason:

“Why can’t Beijing persuade people to have more babies? Lǐ Tíng 李婷, a sociology professor at Renmin University of China, who heads up the school’s Family and Gender Research Center, has some theories. In a new study (in Chinese) published this month, Li suggests that usage of certain Chinese social media sites, such as Weibo and Douban, negatively affects how female college students think about marriage and having children.”

 

Anime causes childlessness?

QUOTE:

“Li claims that different social media sites have distinct effects. Regular use of Weibo, which is roughly the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, leads to more negative views on marriage and forming families. Douban, a Reddit-like social network that started as a forum to discuss literature, music, and movies, had a similar effect. In contrast, those who spent a lot of time on Xiaohongshu, a fashion and lifestyle ecommerce platform whose name means “little red book,” tended to see marriage and kids favorably.”

It continues:

“Li also has theories about user engagement with “subcultures.” She says that those who liked competitive video gaming, also known as esports, were more likely to view marriage positively, while those who watched anime or read web novels a lot tended to feel the opposite way about marriage.”

For context: this study by female professor Li was done with over 10,000 students across 30 universities across China.

10,000 might be a small number in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a big number for a survey these days, seeing as many are barely in the 100’s if that.

According to her independent study, students who watch anime or read light novels are likely to be single and childless, since they feel the opposite way about marriage compared to those who enjoy video games.

 

The backlash was pretty heavy

One detractor (of many) had this to say about the study:

“There are a host of issues that remain to be solved. High housing prices, high living costs, 996, divorce cooling-off period, female trafficking, just to name a few. How about you divert your attention to studies that will make a real impact?”

This study is related to China but it does make you wonder what the difference would be if it was done in the west, in other parts of Asia, Africa, or elsewhere in the world.

It could also be a case of anime being a scapegoat in this study since statistics can be manipulated by the person creating them. It’s not a bad theory since anime is the new punching bag but it’s just a thought.

I don’t see this is a correlation equals causation sort of scenario though.

 

SAUCE: SUP CHINA

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