Time to put people's WeChat use into perspective

As a tech reporter, I am immersed in WeChat every day - it's definitely growing into a super all-in-one app that you cannot afford to stay away from: Hailing taxis, booking movie tickets, reading news posts. It's the whole package.

But over-reliance on the super-app has started to leave me in the grip of an addiction to my phone. I cannot wait to check new notifications or friend requests every single hour. And I turn to "Moments", the social feeds of contacts' updates, when I am bored or depressed.

Apparently, I am not alone. Among the 938 million active monthly users of WeChat (and that's already more than two-thirds of the world's most populous nation), at least one-third spend a solid four hours or more on the app, according to the latest study by Penguin Intelligence, the research arm of WeChat's developer Tencent Holdings Ltd.