China's youth aware of negative impact of social media: Report

Nearly 40 percent of China's young people born after 1990 have turned off notifications from social media apps due to the perceived negative impact of social media, according to the recently released Kantar China Social Media Impact Report, Beijing Evening News reported.

The report shows that social media, and especially WeChat, has become more and more popular in the past year among people over the age of 40, while the WeChat use of the "post-90s" generation has slightly decreased, from 94.1 percent to 86.6 percent.

Most of those surveyed for the report mentioned that positive impacts of social media include socializing with acquaintances and taking in more information. However, respondents also noted that social media has caused them to read fewer books, suffer from worse eyesight, sleep less and maintain less privacy, among other concerns.

As a result, 39 percent of the post-90s generation tries to avoid the negative effects of mobile phone use through measures like turning off app notifications, intentionally limiting the frequency of social media interactions and staying away from social media entirely in certain situations.