I just want to be alone, or perhaps not

In 2018 and 2019 the video game Travel Frog, a product of the Japanese games company Hit-Point, became a hit in China, and anyone who happened to spot someone on bus or a subway train playing it may well have wondered what the fuss was about.

The Travel Frog phenomenon was just one more sign of the increasing importance of the solo economy, with more and more people beginning to actively or passively enjoy and accept their solitude, says say Guo Xin, a marketing professor at Beijing Technology and Business University.

"Especially for the internet generation, eating, traveling and entertainment alone are becoming the norm in their lives."

In fact Travel Frog was a game that seemed to speak directly to those who keep the solo economy ticking. In it a wayward frog has become a baby that people are keen on taking care of. The frog never interacts with the player, eats alone, reads and does craft work at home and often sets out on journeys, sending postcards to the player letting him or her know its new location.

Twenty years ago in China it seemed that being alone had become highly unfashionable, but things are seeming to have come full circle, with young people not only wishing but demanding to have more time and space for themselves and less intimacy with others-at least of the human species. That change in living styles is affecting how people grow, age and even make their departures.

The 2019 One-person Travel Report by Ctrip, an online travel company, says 75 percent of Ctrip's self-operated tour groups at home and abroad have opened options for one-person travel. As those wanting to travel alone grows, it is becoming a strong market niche, with plans to develop more innovative products and services tailored to solo travelers.

In entertainment and recreation, too, the solo economy is changing the way things work. Mini-karaoke booths, self-service photo studios and self-service gyms have popped up on many corners in many cities. The karaoke booths, similar to an old telephone box, are often set up in the corners of shopping malls, covered by curtains, and have excellent sound insulation to meet the needs of singles to sing alone.

Such technology and urbanization are changing the behavior of an entire social group, with individuals removing themselves farther from those around them, and seemingly having few second thoughts about what they are doing but taking to this new way of living with gusto.

Be that as it may, in a world in which instant communications have drawn us closer together, one may ask how far these go-it-aloners really want to withdraw from the herd.

As Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote in his 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Even if you think that your feelings have dried up and you can't give, there will always be something that can touch the strings in the depths of your heart; after all, we are not born to enjoy loneliness."