Study Says Y'all Were a Bunch of Couch Potatoes Over Golden Week

By Ryan Gandolfo

There is nothing better than a little R&R in your humble abode. Apparently, millions of people in China felt the same way during this year's National Week Holiday.

As a way to commemorate the break, WeChat released a digital report on their users' activity throughout the weeklong holiday period (October 1 to 7). The findings were quite amusing, as the app focused on both vacations and staycations (enjoying your vacation time on home turf). 

Most startling amongst the findings was WeChat's report that a total of 21 million users logged less than 100 total steps in a day. In other words, there were 21 million single-day occurrences during the break of people barely leaving their beds.

Image via Giphy

The data was collected using WeChat's WeRun mini-program. The built-in app acts as your personal pedometer, showing you how many steps your family and friends are taking each day.

READ MORE: This Popular Taobao Product Helps You Trick Step Tracking Apps

There is little denying that WeChat has a fair amount of data on us, making their National Week statistics report very interesting, to say the least. 

Neatly presented using various infographics, WeChat highlighted that out of the 21 million people who failed to walk over 100 steps in a given day during the holiday period, 56 percent were millennials. The province with the most ‘staycationers’ appeared to be Guangdong, with over 2 million people spending a day in hibernation mode (it hasn’t even gotten cold yet). 

Image via WeChat/Weibo

WeChat also gathered data on the number of times users read via their e-book and audiobook app WeChat Read. Over the course of the holiday, WeChat users recorded 1.9 million reading hours, which roughly equates to 2,268 years. One user even clocked 84 hours of reading over the seven-day period (likely mixed in with a few naps).

A netizen on Weibo, possibly from Guangdong, commented on the WeChat report, "Those statistics on Guangdong sum up my life, each day the furthest I'd move was to go downstairs to eat." Another person attributed the lack of physical activity to traffic, writing, "Everyone was in a car, stuck in traffic on the highway, should have taken a shortcut."

The report also made note of a number of other categories such as trending topics and popular travel destinations, with Thailand and Japan being the two most popular spots.

The report even shed light on which cities were working the most over the break by measuring the amount of activity on WeChat Work, an office management platform used by businesses and enterprises. Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing were the most active cities, respectively. 

[Cover image via Sina]

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