Second-tier city Guiyang is home to the youngest QQ users in the country, according to a recent report published by QQ Big Data. The city is closely followed by Shenzhen and Yunnan’s Yuxi.
China has an online community of over 760 million users, more than the entire population of Europe and twice that of the US. Over 60% of these users are between 15 and 34 years old. The country’s connected citizens predominantly use the internet for instant messaging, news, search engines, and videos.
The newly released report, entitled the 2018 National Urban Youth Index, utilizes data gathered from QQ’s 7.83 million monthly users between the ages of 15 and 35 years old. It ranks 88 Chinese cities according to the age of their users and is weighted according to the population. The “youngest cities” have a higher index, with the highest being 88.
According to the data, the number of young users in first-tier cities decreased slightly compared to last year. Shenzhen came in first out of all the first-tier cities, followed by Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, and Guangzhou.
However, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou were missing from the Top 20 list, which also takes the cities’ year-on-year increase into account.
Henan outperformed all of the provinces surveyed, showing the fastest growing population of young QQ users. The province’s Luoyang city moved up 31 places compared to last year, ranking 14th in 2018.
Additionally, cities in the north of the country scored an average of 65, while cities in the south scored 68. Despite this, the average in the north increased year-on-year.
The index displays some interesting findings. The prevalence of non-first-tier cities in the top 20 shows they are just as attractive to young people as Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing. Third, fourth, and even fifth-tier cities are slowing the rate of population loss to higher-tier cities. Additionally, the north-south divide is decreasing in size as young people return home from southern cities.