Once considered a funny truth, Douglas Adams’s “three rules of technology”[1] now feels increasingly outdated—especially his claim that any technology introduced after age 35 is against the natural order of things and therefore threatening. Today, millions of older adults who had little prior exposure to digital tools are not only using technology, but actively embracing the new worlds it opens up.
Ethnographic research shows that when a technology becomes sufficiently widespread, useful, and accessible, it can be eagerly adopted, even by seniors in their 70s and 80s (Miller et al. 2021). Crucially, this adoption is not merely compensatory (as with assistive technologies designed for older adults such as bedside alarm systems), but often creative, expressive, and personally meaningful. Many seniors do not simply rely on digital platforms but also repurpose and reshape them in ways that reflect their own agency, aesthetics, and moral sensibilities. This kind of engagement is, of course, usually culturally specific, and often reveals longings and values embedded in seniors’ particular life histories or social worlds (see Wang 2023; Walton 2021).
In 2023, I spent a year conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Zhejiang province, in southeastern China, where I volunteered at a neighborhood health supplements store embedded within a residential community. I was trying to understand a growing social tension: while many senior urbanites actively participate in these local health product stores, their adult children and much of the public often dismiss these stores as deceptive or outright scams. What I discovered through year-long participant observation was that some of these supplements stores functioned as a kind of open-access therapy room—a space where conversations could begin at any time, with anyone, and where healing often happened not through medicine, but through presence, attention, and talk. That same search for connection and self-healing is what now draws many seniors—well beyond my fieldsite—into the digital world.
Confucius once described reaching his seventies as a moral summit: a stage of life when one could follow the heart’s desires without transgressing what was right. [2] For many older adults today, this aspiration takes on new meanings. When time, money, or social judgment are no longer the main concerns, many now follow their curiosity into the digital world, finding their own rhythms of use and new spaces for expression. Some turn to online remedies for the physical challenges of aging, from health supplements to live-streamed wellness advice. Some have picked up the language of e-commerce livestreams, typing catchy phrases to grab discounts or chat with hosts. Others find comfort in melodramatic online fiction or short dramas, playing audiobooks or videos aloud in public, undeterred by the sidelong glances of younger bystanders. And many immerse themselves in the kaleidoscopic world of short video apps like Douyin or Kuaishou, scrolling through sentimental clips, playful filters, and algorithmic surprises that speak to longings otherwise left unspoken.
Zhang Hongmei was one of those aunties. [3] In her late seventies, she often visited the supplements store where I conducted fieldwork, asking for a free foot bath or body massage. While enjoying the services, she would cradle her smartphone, scrolling through Douyin—short videos of people singing, dancing, or sharing fragments of their personal struggles. Among them, she especially liked watching her own newest creations. Smiling, she liked to sing softly along to the background music. Then she replayed it—once, twice, again and again.
A Screenshot of Zhang Hongmei’s Singing Video. The Chinese characters from top to bottom read: “Blessings to You,” “Good luck upon you, wealth for life,” and “Peace and Health.” Image by author.
The above is a screenshot from one of her self-made videos. Her face, transformed by a heavy beauty filter, appeared smooth and radiant—almost like that of a glamorous woman in her thirties. Digital ribbons and glittering stars shimmered around her, casting a soft rainbow glow across the frame. The soaring vocals weren’t hers, and her lip-syncing was off at times, but she carried it through with feeling. More importantly, she had choreographed her hand gestures and body movements to follow the rhythm with delicacy. The song—like many Douyin remixes popular among middle-aged and older users—had lost its original context and creator through countless rounds of circulation. What remained was, in a sense, a true digital folk tune—a catchy melody and blunt, heartfelt lyrics, ready to carry anyone’s story. The lyrics go like this:
Which family doesn’t have troubles?
Which family doesn’t have quarrels?
Which man doesn’t grumble?
Which woman doesn’t nag?
Home is the harbor for a woman,
Home is the hope of a man.
Let’s face all difficulties together,
Don’t keep mentioning divorce.
……
For a long time, videos like this unsettled me—a hard-to-describe mix of kitsch, sentimentality, and raw emotion that I couldn’t quite place. The heavy filters, saturated colors, and melodramatic music all felt like an over-performed version of hardship. This style also clashed with the short-video aesthetics my generation has used to—on TikTok, the carefully curated, pastel-filtered, “That Girl” aesthetic has become almost synonymous with what counts as tasteful or aspirational (Burchell 2023). After watching just one clip, Douyin’s algorithm began feeding me a stream of similar content: middle-aged and older users lip-syncing to internet ballads, sharing stories of hardship, or reenacting scenes of heartache. For those unfamiliar with this corner of the platform, these clips might easily be dismissed as “low-brow” or even “tacky”—and this raw, unfiltered emotional display stands in sharp contrast to the polished look favored by platforms like Rednote for young, middle-class users.
But during my fieldwork, especially as I grew closer to aunties like Zhang Hongmei, I began to see these videos in an entirely different light. These videos, I came to realize, were deeply personal expressions, shaped by long histories of silence, hardship, and struggle. For people like Zhang, who had lived through political upheaval and domestic violence, Douyin offered an open, accessible space for emotional release. Traumas that had long remained unspoken now found a space for healing, even if mediated through music, filters, and mimicry.
Zhang’s experiences are shaped by different kinds of suffering—some, like the domestic violence she endured from her husband in earlier years, are painful yet speakable; others occurred in ways almost impossible to imagine, and have remained buried much deeper.[4] In the early 1970s, as China’s Down to the Countryside Movement continued, Zhang Hongmei, then in her early twenties, was sent to a rural village as a rusticated youth. After spending several years adjusting to life in the countryside, she was forced to fight off an attempted rape by a local villager. Though the man was sentenced to prison, his subsequent suicide triggered a violent backlash from the local community. The psychological scars lingered for years, quietly seeping into the details of her daily life and turning into a constant, inescapable fear.
After returning from the countryside, Zhang met the man who would become her husband. In those early years, he was caring—supportive enough that she entrusted him with the full account of what had happened in the village. He listened, visited the site himself to verify her story, and encouraged her to burn the notebook in which she had documented every painful detail. For a while, she believed she had found the stability she longed for. But over time, their marriage grew strained, marked by betrayal and moments of physical abuse that she still recalled with bitterness. And yet, she stayed—for her daughter, for the ideal of mutual care, and for the memory of who he once was. She said, “Marriage isn’t about anything else…I don’t know how to put it, but enduring hardship—wearing simple clothes, working hard—that’s all fine! What truly matters is that when one person is in trouble, the other must take care of them.
Zhang has spent her whole life searching for someone—or somewhere—that could truly embrace her. After the trauma of her youth, she pinned her hopes on marriage, longing for a husband who would be steady, dependable, and unwavering in his support—someone who could finally provide her with the security she had never known. But marriage failed her.
She poured her love into her daughter instead, lifting her up with everything she had, willing to sacrifice anything for her. But even as she gave unconditionally, she recognized a painful truth: her daughter, by nature, was emotionally distant, unable to offer the kind of warmth and support she had longed for her whole life.
“My life is like a book—filled with all kinds of flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy,” Zhang reflected. “I rarely talk about my hardships, but if I were to start, I could go on and on. There’s no end to it.” When the weight of her past became unbearable, she had two places she turned to for comfort: the health supplements stores and Douyin. “My husband tells me not to spend so much money on health supplements. But I don’t care! I just want to spend money to buy happiness! I just want to be happy!” Then she mentioned Douyin: “Sometimes, I think about the past, and I feel overwhelmed. There’s no one to talk to, so I go on Douyin—because Douyin has everything! Stories about marriages, about in-laws, about ungrateful children, about being mistreated—whatever you’ve experienced, you can find someone talking about it. And when I do, I sing along to the theme songs.”
Zhang Hongmei’s fascination with short videos is not about escaping reality—it is her way of engaging with it and making sense of it. When she scrolls, sings, and lip-syncs, she is not performing for others so much as tending to herself. These short clips, often dismissed as shallow or “tacky,” hold something far more intimate: a way to reconcile with the past, to momentarily soften its sharp edges, and to craft a version of life that feels both bearable and expressive.
For Zhang and many older users, singing along to online ballads is a way of working through their own feelings. Familiar lyrics and melodies offer a space to reconnect with personal beliefs and emotions that are hard to express directly. When Zhang sings songs about marriage and family, she quietly reaffirms her hope for stability and care within intimate relationships. In the more sentimental hardship videos, lines like “No one suffers more than mothers” allow her to voice her frustrations and hardships through someone else’s words. As anthropologists have long shown, ballads, stories, and popular folk expressions have always provided ordinary people with tools to make sense of their lives, share emotions, and reflect on their place in the world (Abu-Lughod 1986).
In the digital world, sharing happens at the click of a button, multiplying content exponentially and creating an elusive sense of connection. As Mazzarella (2017) reminds us, mass media does more than transmit information—it generates an affective surplus, a kind of social energy that spills beyond its technical design. Zhang is part of this dynamic. She feels the quiet thrill as the “likes” add up, the small satisfaction when view counts rise. Yet her engagement goes beyond the platform itself. Sometimes, she downloads her favorite clips from Douyin, saves them to her phone’s photo album, and replays them in private or shares them selectively on WeChat. For her, it is the song, the familiar lyrics, and the emotional space these videos offer that truly matter.
Technology always bends through culture. In China, it might take the form of ChatGPT fortune-telling or herbal remedies pitched through livestreams. But beneath these surfaces is something shared: the impulse to make something, to send it out, to feel—however briefly—that you’ve turned a bit of life into form. That, too, is healing and care.
Notes
[1] The quote is: 1) Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works; 2) Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it; 3) Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
[2] See The Analects, “Wei Zheng” (为政). The original Chinese reads: “七十而从心所欲，不逾矩” (“At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right”, translated by James Legge).
[3] All personal names used in this article and related publications from this research are pseudonyms, created to reflect each interlocutor’s gender, generational background, and, where appropriate, aspects of their personality.
[4] A more detailed version of Zhang Hongmei’s narration and my analysis will appear in my forthcoming dissertation.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a 2023 Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, whose generous support I gratefully acknowledge. I also thank my first reader, Soojin Kim, for suggesting further readings that have enriched my analysis, and editor Iris Zhou for her thoughtful comments on the overall structure. Special thanks to my partner, Daniel, for making the audio recording of this text.
This post was curated by Contributing Editor Wanqing Iris Zhou.
References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments : Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. University of California Press.Burchell, Eloise Lucia. 2023. “Algorithms, aesthetics and agency: An exploration into the performance of the self amongst young women on TikTok.” re:Think – a Journal of Creative Ethnography, 4(1). https://journals.ed.ac.uk/rethink/article/view/6720Mazzarella, William. 2017. The Mana of Mass Society. The University of Chicago Press.Miller, Daniel, et al. 2021. The Global Smartphone: Beyond a Youth Technology. UCL Press, Walton, Shireen. 2021. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Italy: Care and Community in Milan and Beyond. UCL Press.Wang, Xinyuan. 2023. Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China: From the Cultural to the Digital Revolution in Shanghai. UCL Press.
