Digital life is rewiring us, and now eating alone isn't lonely anymore.
In fact, some would call it a luxury.
From fast food solo seats going viral to the businesses cashing in on our collective quiet, we explore the rise of the social anxiety economy.
Why is being alone in public the new normal?
We are live from Beijing.
Speaking of, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Fei Fei and Yushan.
First up.
In an era dominated by digital connection, traditional in-person encounters are increasingly a source of unease.
This modern dilemma is embodied by the recent viral popularity of McDonald's solo dining seats here in China, a phenomenon underscoring the rise of what is being called a social anxiety economy.
Young Chinese are seeking out spaces intentionally designed for personal solitude and minimal social engagement, signaling a change in cultural attitudes.
What's behind this?
What's driving the normalization of solo dining?
And how does it mirror our evolving comfort with social interaction, or perhaps lack thereof?
And also...
In what innovative ways are companies responding to this growing demand for insulated personal space?
Fei-Fei and Yishan, good afternoon.
I guess the concept of eating alone is not new.
We've been eating alone probably since we've been on the planet.
But I think what's changing is how we are dealing with it emotionally.
I remember, maybe 20 years ago, when I would go out for a lunch or a dinner and I had to eat alone.
That would be the most tragic thing ever.
Yeah, the way people see it is kind of shifting nowadays too because, like you said before, if somebody chooses to just sit there and eat alone, it's usually viewed by others around this person as a rather sad thing, or rather pathetic thing even.
Yeah.
Poor you.
Yeah, and I remember I would go out by myself and I would feel be sitting in the restaurant thinking like I don't know what to do with myself.
I've already looked at the menu.
I've already ordered.
And that time between ordering and receiving your food is just the most awkward time of your life.
And I remember back about 10 years ago there was a sort of a challenge online here in China about what kind of activities you can do by yourself, from eating alone, going to the movies alone, eating a hot pot alone.
People are discussing.
You know the level of solo activities that you can do reflects how lonely, on some level, you are.
And that's been quite a discussion out there.
And I tried, you know, for example, going to the movies alone or even going to the karaoke zone.
That's the best thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I realized I love it.
Yeah.
Well, it is not for everyone, or at least it wasn't.
This idea of being alone out in public spaces is now perhaps viewed differently.
And there's a whole economy surrounding it called the social anxiety economy.
We'll get to that.
But let's start with what went viral and what people are talking about these days.
That's from inside the McDonald's, something you think you see and know so well.
But nowadays, if you walk inside a McDonald's in China nowadays, you may see that there are rolls of distinctive seats that are specifically arranged along the restaurant's walls or next to the windows, and each are separated by partitions that have some well.
Some people humorously translate that into protection screens against fake intimacy.
That's something... that I've been hoping to have when I was a kid.
Fake intimacy or protection screens?
Protection screens so nobody sees my face when I'm eating.
You know that feeling?
So this is a new dining, relatively newer dining scene, tailored for solo eaters, and it's quietly gaining attention online and also inside these booths.
The restaurant aims to just provide you a cozy, private space for for not only dining, perhaps just spending some time on your own or take a nap, if you want to.
Now, these seats, since we're talking about McDonald's, we'll speak on that specifically.
These designs are not new within the restaurant's walls.
They've been there for a while, these solo seats.
It's just now they've started to suddenly catch attention.
So I'm wondering why, what's the reason for the virality?
Well, I think that it's sort of moving into a broader conversation right now in the societies about social anxiety first of all um, not in the sense of being um like uh, on the level of illness anxiety, but more of i'd rather stay alone and not speaking to others and um, i have this sometimes a little anxiety when it comes to interacting socially with other people, especially strangers, And that is also reflecting a sort of a younger generation's shifting towards their personal space about, you know, the view of solitude in public spaces where I think, especially as Steve mentioned, 20 years ago, you were supposed to hang around in a pack, you know, with your friends in a group.
When you are solo walking around, that means something is wrong.
So it sort of making people more aware of themselves and feels like more visible to others at times and more uncomfortable.
But now I think more and more people are trying to normalize this solo activities and going out and so on and so forth.
So not only in McDonald's, in these McDonald's cases but, for example, in other social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, like Red Note, The trend of solo dining has also amassed an eye-popping more than 4 billion views and nearly 12 million discussions as of this month.
So it's something that young people have been talking about.
Why did you respond that way?
Why did you say yay?
Remember the very popular hot pot franchise, Heidi Lo.
I remember seeing many people posting about oh, I'm just here to dine alone, but they feel sorry for me and put a plushie next to me.
As a way that you're accompanied by something.
But nowadays, when people want to dine solo, we mean that.
And it's recognized by social media and a whole lot of population out there.
I didn't realize this.
So that particular hot pot chain, this was, in their eyes, kind of...
A service that they were providing you.
Yeah, they were trying to show kindness.
And they wouldn't even ask you.
They would just put a plushie, what, in the chair opposite?
Yes, yes.
Really?
Face to face to the solo diner.
They will ask you.
I would assume if you want to remove, they'll remove it for sure.
But the gesture that they're trying to show, that and most importantly that's a gesture of kindness is signifying just how fast shifting an idea that people are having, especially here in China.
Here's something to make you seem a little less pathetic.
Here you go.
Enjoy your hot pot.
I don't think that works.
So that's the China's solo dining economy, and it's also expected to surpass 18 trillion yuan, or roughly over 250 billion US dollars, by 2025.
And that's an annual growth rate of 153, meaning that it's just something that people are looking for nowadays.
And I think in recent years there are more and more restaurants following this trend, such as one that I haven't tried myself but I've seen like in almost every a giant mall's B1 level.
That's the Nong Xiao Guo.
It's a self-service hot pot franchise.
They serve dishes via a rotating convo conveyor belt, like you know the rotating sushi thing, and they allow customers to just enjoy individual hot pot serving without even need to raise your hand to ask for service.
Yeah, i understand the attraction there, because if you're not interested in eating alone, you can kind of mix in.
Naturally, even if you're sitting by yourself, you you can't really tell that you're sitting by yourself, right?
So this is what this is, when you know those call buttons kind of replace any kind of social interactions you might have with the service attenders and also it's relatively avoiding the awkwardness of of any frequent server visits as well.
You know, in those restaurants they come up quite frequently asking oh, are you happy with everything?
Is there anything i can help you with?
That's kind of putting a pause on that too.
So Solo dining models is kind of expanding more in a massive scale.
Now, as I was looking at you know how we were going to unfold this story Amongst ourselves and for our audience today.
There are two kind of sides to this coin There's the solo dining the social anxiety economy and then there's just anxiety amongst young people in general and what I think I realized is is that it's almost impossible to separate these two into two separate topics because they're so deeply intertwined.
Back in 2023, and here's a point to that back in 2023, they did a survey of over 1400 Chinese people that were born between the 1980s and 2000s.
They conducted that from a news platform called U36KR here in the country.
And here's the result.
80% reported feeling anxious in social interactions.
And that's kind of the highlight of the growing prevalence of social discomfort here in the country.
The social anxiety economy.
I think you mentioned some numbers just a moment ago.
Yushan, it's over 17 billion as of last year.
Now, if we compare that and I want to compare this to other parts of the world, We're seeing similar results in terms of the anxiety.
This is from mentalhealth.org UK back in 2023.
It's three years old, but still relevant, I think.
89% of UK adults aged 18 to 24 said anxiety interfered with their day-to-day life to some extent.
Then this is from SeattleAnxietycom.
Researchers conducted a self-reported study of nearly 7000 individuals between the ages of 16 and 29 across seven countries selected for their cultural and economic diversity.
Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, the U.S., Vietnam, and China.
And they found that 36% of the participants met the threshold for social anxiety disorder.
Now we're talking about two different things here when you feel socially anxious and having social anxiety disorder.
Those are two different things.
But still, I think it's worth sharing those statistics.
So do you see what I mean?
I mean, if we're talking about the percentages of people who experience social anxiety in their lives on a daily basis, it's impossible to not connect that to the economy that comes from it.
And why do you think people are having this kind of anxiety in social interaction?
Is this something new or because of like, something happened, for example in technology, driving this level of anxiety up, or it's been around, just never been reported?
That's a fair question.
But I think when we look and this is something I think we've probably discussed before we can point to the pandemic, we can point to social media.
We can point to digital communication.
The way we interact with each other, the way we speak with each other now, is through abbreviations and emoticons, through text.
We talked about the fact before that young people are uncomfortable when their phone rings.
Yeah, because, you know, sending messages, you can delete it.
You can edit it.
It's curated.
Yeah.
You can perfect it.
But here in a social interaction, you can't.
But yeah.
Oh, sorry.
No, I was just thinking about one case that we kind of previously mentioned in other shows on Roundtable 2 that remember how kids grow up decades ago.
They play around in the same neighborhood downstairs offline.
There were no online back then.
But nowadays kids grow up, the younger generation they kind of grow up surrounded by screens and social media and everything that do not require people-to-people interactions anymore.
And that's what's led to this social anxiety economy.
So, rather than go deeper into the reasons behind the social anxiety, we'll just say it exists and we'll leave it at that.
So what are some of the things that are shaping consumer behavior today?
Uh in, in modern china.
Let's talk about the ones here in china and we'll see if we can find any comparable statistics from the west.
Yeah, we're seeing data from industry research company chinairncom revealing that the solo dining market back to that topic is expected to surpass 18 trillion yuan in 2025 in china.
So that's with uh Like I mentioned earlier annual growth rate from the year before.
So it also indicates that solo dining is also becoming part of this giant market of just the solo economy.
And yeah, according to iMedia Research 2021 report, 68 of single people here in China said that eating alone is a common situation for them.
And me myself proudly announced that I'm part of that.
And also according to the official data, the National Bureau of Statistics, that actually the one person households has been expanding here in China as well, accounting for more than 25 of our household.
And, according to other surveys, that by the end of the decade that figure will have climbed to more than 30.
So between 150 million to 200 million people will be living alone in China.
And that means that the population of solo living young adults aged between 20 to 39 will see an explosive rise.
And that means we need more curated and also customized solo services provided for this one person household.
Food delivery sector is connected here.
I think not everyone who orders food at home is ordering for a single person household, but still that will be a major contribution.
And the food delivery sector here in China is huge.
545 million users in the food delivery sector.
So I think what we see from that is that if we kind of scan back a little bit, we can see it's pretty easy to draw the lines between all of these things, isn't it?
American statistics for eating alone, solo dining, it's rising.
One in five Americans.
This is from restaurantdive.com, by the way, from last year.
One in five Americans, about 20%, say that they typically dine alone.
That's from a 2025 Diner Trends report.
And 18% said that they dined out alone twice. in the last 12 months.
29% of diners said that they dine out by themselves once a week or more often.
Young diners eating alone more frequently.
49% of millennials, 46% of Gen Z diners do so at least once a week.
It's common and it's becoming way more common than it used to be.
But it extends... beyond just eating alone, this social anxiety economy.
It extends to the supermarkets.
Right.
I really love the idea that supermarkets in China are doing it nowadays.
One example, Fresh Hipple, you know that one, the Alibaba supermarket chain?
That one has introduced the Do Not Disturb signs for shoppers since I think it was June last year.
It's a piece of notification board that's kind of similar to the Do Not Disturb board you kind of hang on the hotel door when you're traveling.
So that thing is to signal that they don't want to be approached by staff for promotions or membership.
Just leave me alone.
I want to shop.
Yeah, that's all.
I've not seen this really.
No, i haven't been to a fresh hippo offline store yet to to see just how convenient it is.
Well, not only have i not seen the do not disturb signs that you can put on your shopping cart, i've also not seen anyone disturbed while shopping with a shopping cart.
Is that common for supermarket staff to approach you with promotions and things like that?
Yeah, I think, especially in chain stores they will have like promotion activities for different brands and they'll sort of ask you and invite you to sample, for example.
But do they approach you and say, come over here and try a sample?
Yeah, yeah.
Like a sample of a sausage or yogurt.
I haven't been to the Sam's Club offline either for a long time, but that's what they always do in the past.
They approach you with the whole dishes of very, totally well fried steak pieces, cut in smaller pieces, and ask if you want to try and if you like the taste, they'll start to introduce which brand it is and like how they make the products, which is the way to cook it most deliciously, stuff like that yeah, so so you have to make small talks with them right, and some people may not like it.
Yeah the, do not disturb.
Sign on your supermarket cart.
Think about that for a second.
I never thought we'd get there before.
And, speaking of supermarkets, I remember when the self-checkouts became a big deal.
And this was a hot issue in Canada, I remember.
And there were online comments saying don't use the self-checkouts at the supermarkets because eventually those things will be replacing human beings.
We need to protect their jobs.
So the focus was on the protection of work, right?
Right.
But I think what we didn't realize maybe back then was that putting those self-checkouts in the supermarkets and now we can see them in other types of stores too was one step closer to not interacting with each other in public.
It's just one other example of that.
Yeah, exactly.
And also not only in supermarkets, but in a lot of different...
For example, also in restaurants in China.
If you go to a McDonald's or KFC or whichever fast food chains, they also will have screens that you can place your order without the need of talking to anybody.
It's the same type of thing.
I always order on my phone first before I walk in.
You're even smarter.
That's another basic example of you don't have the need to communicate with anybody in the store to pick up your food.
But not only on restaurants, in supermarkets, And even I think there are also self-service, for example, clothing stores or convenience stores or hotels or even gyms happening in this.
Convenience stores I've seen, but I haven't seen self or autonomous, excuse me, hotels.
We did one.
There was a new one in Las Vegas last year called I think it's called Autonomous.
And it opened in 2025.
We covered it on Roundtable.
And we kind of talked about the same things.
They boast the convenience of the lack of human interaction.
Yeah, there is one in Shenzhen called High Inns, and it's located in southern China city of Shenzhen.
And when you walk in, it was described online that it looks like the front self-serving area the ATM machines inside a bank.
There's no one to attend you for checking in.
Yeah.
So you just get in and you put in your ID card and then, following your registration information that's already in the system, it will spit out sort of your room card within 10 seconds.
That's how it works.
And also it's also featuring a 60 square meter self-service public area.
That's Extremely well-equipped.
So if you need anything like toothbrush kits or the disposable slippers, you can just grab some there.
If not, just ignore it and then come up.
And everything is all designed for self-service.
Like vending machines.
Vending machines, indeed.
Snacks and toothpaste and that type of stuff.
And the report I saw also reported that there's only one.
The one and only staff member on standby in the lobby said that he is both an employee and a hotel manager.
And on a daily basis.
He alone can handle all duties with dealing with guests without being overwhelmed, since most of the task is already self-serviced by the customers themselves.
And this truly kind of realized an operating model.
And consumers really enjoy this too.
In just six months since its opening last year.
It was reported earlier this year, but it was open launch last year.
The store had already achieved an average occupancy rate of 101.
That's pretty good.
People like it.
Yeah, people like it.
People want it, right?
That guy is going to be employee of the month every month, by the way.
No competition.
Hopefully taking all the titles.
What else?
Mental health between 2022 and 2025.
This is from the American Psychological Association from this year.
Between 2022 and 2025, the number of AI companion apps surged by 700%.
700% and in 2026 they're expected to become even more embedded into our social lives.
One of the examples is Character AI.
That's a chatbot service where you can generate human-like text responses, and I think you can customize your own character as well.
They have 20 million monthly users and more than half of them are under the age of 24.
I think we covered the boundaries of these companionships, these AI-powered companionships on Roundtable before, and how?
Yes, on some level it can help with the companionship that a lot of solo dwellers are looking for, but there are also problems and the lining behind the use of such services.
And right now I think the industries and also different governments are sort of testing and to see how we raise the boundary and how should we protect especially minors.
Yeah, but while we're having that conversation, more and more and more things are popping up that are feeding into this social anxiety that we have.
One is slow live stream.
Yeah, that one is very, very popular, at least here in China.
For example, on our CGT website we have like slow live streaming basically every day about, for example, the latest one over the weekend, they have a live stream showcasing a national park in Sichuan province for about an hour.
What do they do in the live stream?
They just show the scenery of the park.
And I think, apparently for a lot of the solo dwellers, this live streaming can also provide emotional support, can be a digital space where they can just play in the background and ease their loneliness if they have any.
And there are also other live streams.
For example, there are people live streaming about they're reading something or meditation process or making something, and they're just live streaming.
That can be also very comforting to a lot of this.
Yes therapeutic comforting cathartic, use whatever words we want to use for the benefits of this type of thing.
But yet we're talking about lack of social interaction here.
And when we think of live streams before or at least me, when I think of that I think of some active host, really high energy, speaking very quickly and interacting with a live chat.
That's happening.
But these slow live streams are exactly the opposite.
Yeah.
Speaking of which, I was just in one yesterday in one of those live stream online rooms And it features one girl painting a water paint quietly sometimes, occasionally chat with the comments and interact a little bit.
But most of the time, she just paints.
And I found that so cool.
It's better than leaving everything alone.
See, that would annoy me.
And in the meantime, I can just read.
And she plays like a very, very peaceful background music out there and i found it such a good combination with my vibe.
Yeah, that's what people are into these days.
Do you remember when asmr in china?
Did asmr take off?
Yes, of course.
Oh my god, it's also another companion.
Listen to the paper.
Oh my god.
I watched those and i was like say something louder.
I hated those things.
But It's what people are kind of into these days, isn't it?
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right.
So there you have it.
What do you think about this, Feifei?
I mean, are we headed towards a future where we're not even going to talk to each other anymore?
Well, I don't think I won't go to that extreme with the solo economy or social anxiety economy here.
I think it's more about giving you a choice in the society.
You can go out and hang around with your friends in a pack.
You also have the choice of just stay quiet in behind one of the semi-enclosed areas in a restaurant and just enjoy yourself with a burger.
Or just doing anything you feel like and not having the pressure of you have to talk to somebody.
You have to worry about the small talks.
Yeah, I can't agree more, because this is an elevating of the societal acceptance, if not tolerance, of people like us who just want a bit of coziness amidst the whole.
I miss everything that's going on around us.
So more options, more freedom for the introverts.
Like, why not?
So instead of calling it a social anxiety economy, I would propose we call it the I group, I type of group of people economy.
You know, just to help with the introvert people group in the society here.
And in the meantime, it generates a fuller business mode for whatever walks of life you might be in.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to disagree from a business point of view.
Business owners are smart.
They will find opportunity wherever they can find it.
I'm just worried about the future of the ability or the skill of interacting with others.
Because when we go to work, we're still going to have to do that.
When we interact with our friends or our family members, you still need to have that social skill.
And the reason skill is in that term is because it is a skill.
Character AI, they have an age limit of 13, I think it is, to register.
I think it's 16 if you want to use it in other countries.
Maybe Australia is on that list.
But if we think about That's the age where young people are being trained to find their relationships and relationship satisfaction from that age.
That's dangerous to me because not dangerous in an end of the world type way, but in a social skill, in a social development type of way, because those are curated interactions and they're not going to disappoint you, because you get exactly what you want from that chat bot, from that AI girlfriend or boyfriend that have become so popular these days.
So how do you go out and interact with people in public?
How do you interact with your coworkers if you Never learn to develop those skills.
What about the art of conversation?
The art of conversation, being a good conversationalist the ability to share words with someone and have a meaningful interaction that way,
I don't know.
I feel like it's going to disappear.
Does it matter?
I don't know.
Because if everybody's socially awkward, then I guess it doesn't make any difference at all.
But in the meantime, I totally get the point you're sharing, Steve.
And I think maybe it's up to the business side.
Maybe it's up to the society side that people need to be aware that even if we have this place to escape to, it doesn't mean that we can stay hiding in that place forever.
That's true.
It's important that we have the skills, like you said, the conversational skills at least, and we can pull it up when it's necessary.
It's not that these opportunities that we created for quote-unquote introverts are good excuses for people people to stop interacting.
That's not what it's meant, right?
It's not about hiding behind those um boards and just pretend you can be a conversationalist well well, you actually don't.
Yeah, the way i see it, it's better that we have it than we don't.
Yeah, fair point.
And two things can be true.
You can have your own time when you want it, and you can also have your social time when you want it to.
I enjoyed that social interaction with the both of you.
