Digital Wellbeing in the Silver Economy: The Case for a “Senior Mode” on Chinese Short-Video Platforms

Abstract Book of the 12th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences

Year: 2026

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Digital Wellbeing in the Silver Economy: The Case for a "Senior Mode" on Chinese Short-Video Platforms

Sihan Zhang, Lull Noguera, Juan José

ABSTRACT:

With the increasing aging of China’s population, the market of China’s silver economy is expanding rapidly, and a large number of elderly people are flocking to short video platforms. At this stage, most of China’s short video platforms are driven by algorithms. Many short video platforms have also launched the elder mode for the elderly group, but so far the so-called elder mode launched by the platform is only focused on the surface mode such as the enlarged font adjustment interface. They largely ignore the serious risks of the elderly consumer group on the short-video platforms, such as digital deception and misleading health marketing.In order to mitigate the potential risks under this situation, this paper proposes a new framework concept of the elderly model based on the youth model implemented for minors in the Chinese market. It turns the shallow enlarged font adjustment interface to the deeper algorithm intervention, reduces the weight of the algorithm for the highly manipulative content that may be generated, and carries out family auxiliary verification and tailored content recommendations for abnormal financial transactions, such as large transactions and frequent transactions.
At the same time, this paper emphasizes that a good elderly model should not only limit the behavior of the elderly, but also improve the use feeling of the elderly, and better provide a technical platform for the healthy development of the silver economy. This paper focuses on the dual perspectives of silver economy and digital sociology, based on the local culture, puts forward the governance scheme that can accommodate the current situation of the global aging population, and provides reference for the technical design under the global aging.

Keywords: Silver Economy; Short-Video Platforms; Digital Wellbeing; Gerotechnology