For many parents, smartwatches for children offer peace of mind—tracking location and enabling quick calls. But in China, these devices, particularly those made by Little Genius (Xiaotiancai), have become the center of a relentless social competition among kids as young as five. The watches aren’t just about safety; they’re about status.
The Rise of the Like Economy
Launched in 2015, Little Genius watches now dominate the global kids’ smartwatch market, accounting for nearly half of all sales. The platform gamifies nearly every aspect of a child’s social life. Likes function as currency, with kids able to exchange them for snacks, games, and social standing. The system is designed to encourage reciprocity: send likes, receive likes.
This has created a bizarre but thriving economy. Some kids use bots to inflate their like counts, while others hack the watches to dox rivals or even find romantic partners. One 18-year-old told Chinese media she met all three of her boyfriends through the platform, only to dump two of them after they requested inappropriate photos. The watch has become a shortcut to social life, but one that is deeply transactional.
The Hierarchy of Likes
Little Genius’s ranking system incentivizes kids to maximize their “high-level” friends—those who can send more likes per day. Lower-status kids are pressured to engage in competitive antics to avoid being dropped by more popular peers. As one consultant, Ivy Yang, puts it, the watch creates “a whole world,” but one where friendship is commodified.
Engagement Hacks and the Bot Trade
The competitive pressure has spawned a black market of engagement hacks. Tutorials on platforms like RedNote (Xiaohongshu) show users how to bypass daily like limits. Some kids even sell their old accounts or bots that send likes automatically. One 17-year-old with over 2 million likes reportedly earned $8,000 in a year selling these services before leaving the platform after cyberbullying and online fights.
The underlying trend is clear: in China, even childhood social life is being quantified, optimized, and monetized. This raises questions about the long-term effects on children’s social development and whether the relentless pursuit of digital validation could overshadow genuine relationships.
The Little Genius case demonstrates how easily tech can be warped into a status game, turning kids into users, metrics into currency, and friendship into a transaction.
