Study streaming popular among China's Gen Z

In the recent two years, livestreaming rooms of online study are booming in China.

Over the past year, an online streaming room called Cozy Study Room has been favored by Generation Z users. From 2021 to date, this online streaming room has gained more than 220,000 followers on Bilibili, which can be seen as the Chinese version of YouTube. Bilibili is one of the most popular social media platforms in China. Cozy Study Room is currently ranked among the top 3 live streams in China in the study streaming field.

Unlike real-person livestreamer, Cozy Study Room is hosted by a virtual streamer, an animated cat. The character and animations are designed by award-winning motion artist Chenxin Yang. Chenxin Yang's artistic style – hand-drawn watercolor style with geometric character design, which is widely recognizable in China, making the cartoon character very vivid. No matter which place the cat is sitting in, there is always a cute hand-drawn mug at the side with hot coffee in it, which helps concentrate on studying. Similar to real heated online or offline major influencers, this cat has already gained a large group of loyal fans since early 2021. In the livestreaming room, its loyal fans wear the exclusive badges from Cozy Study Room.

The animations of Cozy Study Room present delightful visual narratives for the audience to immersively experience the virtual world. There are various scenes in the streaming that change from time to time, such as classroom scenes, 3D scenes, ink style scenes, and so on. In the study room, there is a countdown timer offered at the lower right corner of the screen, which has a 25-minute study session and a 5-minute break. Audiences keep entering the streaming and sending live chat messages as their study notes and working progress marks. A notable check-in widget at the lower left of the screen records the general progress they sent. There are many people who encourage their online study mates to be pumped. On average, more than 12,000 people are active online every day in Cozy Study Room.

This heated trend, led by Cozy Study Room, is sweeping the animation industry nationwide. More channels and artists have been increasingly releasing online companion learning cartoon characters to catch up the wave. Some of the most popular animated videos of this type have reached millions of views.

With the fact that people are spending more time online watching videos and the rise of remote learning these days, this way of online streaming study is getting more eyeballs. In April 2022, Nestlé launched an animated online streaming marketing campaign called "Red Cup Study Room", which has 6 highly-styled set-ups, including a Chinese ink style study room, magic study room, university study room, etc. The average number of people online during the livestreaming event exceeded 10,000, and the cumulative number of people who participated in activities online in the official app exceeded one million.

With the professional, artistic and social influence of Cozy Study Room in the art field and online social platforms, other industry big names, such as Shanbay, and other meditation service apps have also launched their online study room with animated cartoon characters for accompanying learning in 2022.