Keep apps at bay to celebrate real life

People busy playing with their smartphones at a get-together of family or friends are a common scene nowadays. To make such people realize that ignoring family members or friends is sheer rude behavior, a real-life game has hit the Internet. Those participating in the game, which has become quite popular, cannot play with their mobile phones while having dinner together, and the first one to do so has to foot the dinner bill.

Face-to-face interaction has, to a large extent, given way to online chats thanks to smartphones and virtual social networking applications. Tools for social networking in cyberspace have undergone a generational shift, from QQ and MSN to micro blogs and WeChat, and interpersonal interactions declined over the past decade.

Given the demands of a rapidly advancing society, urban residents have little spare time after work for face-to-face interactions. So they have taken recourse to apps and online chat sites to keep in touch with relatives and friends. As a result, WeChat, as an extension of QQ on mobile phones, has become the top choice of the majority of Chinese for instant messaging.