Against the backdrop of a sharp decline in marriage rates in China, parents have found a new way to influence their children's decisions: emotional videos generated by artificial intelligence. In these, elderly characters — lonely men and women — sob while explaining how they regret not listening to their parents' advice and starting a family when they were young. The figures alarming Chinese society are truly impressive: according to the Xinhua news agency and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the PRC, in 2024, the number of official marriage registrations in the country was 6.106 million — 20.5 percent fewer than the previous year. The marriage rate has fallen to 4.3 per thousand people. It is these figures that have triggered a wave of content that social media users have dubbed a "cyber-attack" by worried parents.
The Tears Factory: How AI Videos Work
Social media platforms Douyin and Weibo, according to several Chinese media reports, are flooded with such clips. In one of the most cited videos, a 58-year-old woman, generated by a neural network, finds herself completely alone in a hospital room: other patients around her are visited and cared for by loved ones, while her bed is surrounded by silence. In another clip, a 56-year-old character tearfully admits that they ignored their parents' advice about starting a family in their youth and is now "paying" for it with loneliness. The footage that has gone viral shows elderly women crying on screen, with doctors in white coats and visitors standing around them. Although most such videos are distributed with a special label "created by AI," their views number in the millions, and the number of shares continues to grow.
"Show This to Everyone Who Is Not Married Yet"
Among Weibo and Douyin users, opinion is divided. Part of the audience supports the parents' initiative: "We need more videos like this. Let's see who still prefers to stay single," one commenter wrote. Another user urged: "Let everyone share these clips and show them to the youth." For many parents worried about their children's future, such videos have become a tool they believe can "open the eyes" of those who are still delaying marriage. Critics, however, warn that such pressure may only exacerbate the social divide between those married and those living alone, turning care into a form of emotional blackmail.
The Youth's Reaction: From Laughter to Rejection
The response of the younger generation has been largely unexpected for the campaign's initiators. Instead of tears and a reconsideration of life priorities, most young users perceive AI videos as absurd content. "It's very funny that they used AI because they couldn't find a real person who would make people cry and get married," one user ironically commented. Others note that such pressure could backfire: offend young people, spoil relationships with parents, and become an additional argument in favor of a conscious choice against marriage. Thus, videos created to encourage marriage turn into a reason for jokes for a significant part of the audience, rather than a poignant lesson.
Statistics That Leave No Illusions
The context in which this media campaign is unfolding determines its scale. A 20.5 percent drop in marriages in one year is not a statistical error but a sustained demographic trend that has been troubling Chinese authorities for several years. A rate of 4.3 per thousand means that in a country of more than 1.4 billion people, fewer than five people per thousand marry each year. For a society where the tradition of starting a family remains one of the key expectations of the older generation, such figures are seen as a challenge. AI videos have essentially become an attempt to adapt an old piece of advice — "get married before it's too late" — into a format that young people will at least open in their feed. Whether this attempt works, judging by the audience's reaction, remains in question.
