The lying flat movement, global youth, and globality: a case of collective reading on Reddit

ABSTRACT

Youth withdrawal or ‘stagnant youth’ – such as hikikomori in Japan, NEET in Europe, and the lying flat movement in China – has been widely observed in recent decades. Seen as a culture- or geography-based and discrete phenomenon, however, its global connections across times and spaces are overlooked. Through the lens of globality or global consciousness of connectivity, this article explores how a news report on China’s lying flat movement was discussed by global youth on Reddit, an online idea exchange platform, and how this collective reading event has enabled their senses of transplanetary connectivity and generational solidarity. I argue that consciousness of connectivity, especially from the perspectives of those who are habitually peripheralized, can function as an important entry point to better understanding the shared predicaments, as well as potentials, of young people who feel stuck or ‘out of place and pace’ at the current stage of contemporary globalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Global youth
• connectivity
• globality
• generation
• deceleration
• Reddit

Acknowledgements

Author thanks the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments on the article. She also wishes to express her appreciation to Yumiko Kiuchi and John Fink at McMaster University for their research assistance at the data collection stage of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 As one of the earliest news reports, this NYT news article primarily reports the story of Luo Huazhong, the author of the original ‘lying flat’ post on Tieba, as well as reactions of a fellow ‘lying flatist’, a scholar, the ‘ruling Communist Party’, and a ‘prominent billionaire’ in China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) [grant number 435-2020-0139].

Notes on contributors

Yanqiu Rachel Zhou

Yanqiu Rachel Zhou is a Professor at the Department of Health, Aging & Society, as well as the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition (IGHC), McMaster University, Canada. She has published widely in the areas of globalization studies, global health, immigration, sexuality, social policy, and time studies. She is currently conducting a 4-year project entitled “Globalization, time, and nostalgia: A transnational conjunctural analysis”, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC).