Earning 60,000 yuan a year, "Genius Kids" mass-produces underage "big shots".
Abstract:
Behind a children's smartwatch priced over 2,000 yuan lies a world composed of likes, virtual transactions, and social hierarchies. In this world, fraud, cyberbullying, and porn - related issues also occur from time to time.
At the age of 18, Ling Shi has 150 friends on the Xiaotiancai smartwatch, and his/her homepage has over 1 million likes. Such an account is worth 1,000 yuan.
Yu Shao, Tian Shao, Qing Huan, Jiang Wang, Yu Xi, Liu Nian... There is a list of "big shots" in the circle circulated among the people. Their average age is only between 11 and 17, and they are junior or senior high school students. To be on the list, one needs at least 600,000 likes, and popularity and recognition within the circle are also taken into account. Since they have access to more resources, some big shots are also involved in reselling accounts, and helping others become big shots is also a business.
Like Arc'teryx and lululemon, Xiaotiancai is a must - have for the little members of middle - class families. Hu Xiaoqing, the general manager of Yangwang Automobile, once posted on Weibo, exclaiming that there was a sixth - grade primary school student among Yangwang's fans, and this senior fan was also the group leader of the "Yangwang Fan Group" in the Xiaotiancai smartwatch circle.
"Most of them come from families with assets between millions and hundreds of millions (referred to as A7 - A9 families)," Ling Shi said. Their parents are mostly civil servants, highly educated professors, or businessmen.
As a "big shot among big shots", Qian Mo's homepage has over 2 million likes. She enjoys this "honorific title", and as soon as she posts a dynamic, there will be an enthusiastic response. When she was most obsessed with Xiaotiancai, she could spend the whole day on it, liking posts, chatting, and hanging out in groups...
This has ultimately promoted the circle culture of Xiaotiancai, spreading from the online world to the real world. Among primary and middle school students, if your smartwatch is not Xiaotiancai, you will be excluded from the social circle.
In order not to let their children access mobile phones too early and to meet the needs of safety and communication, many parents choose the Xiaotiancai smartwatch. "My child said that he/she must have a Xiaotiancai smartwatch. If I want to buy another brand, he/she would rather not have a smartwatch at all."
However, behind this small screen, many invisible business transactions have emerged. In the world of minors, fraud, cyberbullying, and porn - related issues also occur from time to time.
Xiaotiancai: Mass - producing "Big Shots"
At the age of 17, Qian Mo earned over 60,000 yuan in a year with Xiaotiancai. The peak season for her business of selling "bots" is usually during the winter and summer vacations - when there is more free time for socializing in the circle. During the best - selling period, she can get 5 or 6 orders a day. Calculated at an average price of 100 yuan per order, her daily income can reach 600 yuan.
Qian Mo has nearly 50 second - level agents under her - all of them are also minors, and the youngest is only 13 years old. They all want to earn some pocket money and share a piece of the pie with her.
This group of young "little merchants" is engaged in the business of getting likes in the "homepage circle": The bots they sell can be used to break through the system through technical means, which is commonly known as the "like - brushing" service. Buying bots to brush likes is the easiest way to quickly become a "big shot".
Everyone wants to be a big shot and enjoy the flattery and favor. This is the human nature that Xiaotiancai has discovered, and it is also the barrier that differentiates it from other children's smartwatch brands. "Don't buy a Huawei smartwatch for your child. He will feel isolated at school," a high - upvoted comment replied when a parent posted a question asking which smartwatch was better to buy.
Products linked to social interaction have a natural first - mover advantage. Huawei smartwatch, which ranks second in market share, and Xiaomi, which ranks third, have also launched the function of adding friends by tapping the watches together, but they have never been able to break through because Xiaotiancai has built a moat for children's social interaction.
In the "homepage circle", besides being an agent like Qian Mo, there are other small businesses to do: selling accounts, opening small shops, shooting videos for others, and acting as an account manager...
Selling an account is a one - time deal. It costs about 1,000 yuan to raise an account with 1 million likes. If a well - connected "big shot" like Qian Mo acts as an intermediary, the commission is about 10%. This year, after the college entrance examination, Ya Rong, a "big shot" from Shanghai, sold his/her account with 2 million likes for 4,700 yuan at once.
The "little merchants" are sensitive to "user pain points" and develop targeted services: If a student cannot operate an account for a long time during school, they offer an account management and like - getting service for 30 - 50 yuan a week; if someone likes a gorgeous and cool homepage, they sell tutorials on how to change long names and shoot videos, priced from 3 yuan to 20 yuan each.
Surrounding the Xiaotiancai smartwatch, children have developed a whole set of trading models centered around "likes" - some of them call it "light entrepreneurship".
This circle also has its own slang and rules. "Brushing" means adding a friend, liking their homepage, and then deleting them immediately. "No freeloading" means not being allowed to add others' friends in the group for expanding friends. "Backdoor" means that if you become someone's backdoor friend, you won't be deleted unilaterally.
In addition to the "homepage circle", multiple circles such as the "sports circle" and the "hacking circle" have also emerged in the Xiaotiancai smartwatch system.
The "hacking circle" targets the built - in closed system of Xiaotiancai that cannot install third - party software. As long as you break through the parent - mode and flash the system, you can turn the smartwatch into a fully functional mini - phone. On the Internet, the tutorials for hacking Xiaotiancai are constantly evolving with the update of the official system. In the AI era, smart students will also use AI to prepare detailed flashing procedures.
Qian Mo entered the business under the influence of HL in the hacking circle and became his subordinate. HL is a well - recognized "technical expert" in the hacking circle and can fix the system bugs of Xiaotiancai. However, his personal information is very mysterious. Qian Mo only knows that he is relatively young.
The "homepage bot" developed by HL is one of the most popular bots on the market. Initially, Qian Mo and he agreed on a 23 - yuan commission per order, but due to the dishonesty of her "agents", she got into trouble. Someone took the lead in slandering her in the circle, saying that she was scamming and running away. Many people sent her the most abusive messages on her social accounts.
Doing business also has risks. For the "little merchants", the biggest risk is dealing with the parents of minors.
Although Qian Mo and others would state in advance before selling that all transactions must be approved by parents, it is still inevitable that some minors spend money secretly without their parents' knowledge. A very angry parent even reported the case to the police, but "the police can't handle this kind of situation," Qian Mo said. Finally, she refunded half of the money in that "incident".
The Hidden Social Network
Owning a Xiaotiancai smartwatch, like having a schoolbag or a pencil, seems to have become a necessity for children.
In parents' eyes, a smartwatch only needs to meet two functions: positioning (to ensure safety) + communication (for instant contact). But for children who are exploring the world and have a strong need to make friends, they are afraid of being isolated. The recognition of a peer (even a virtual like) is often more convincing than the praise of an elder.
In addition to liking posts, some people also imitate adults in online dating. They leave a message of "cpdd (looking for a game partner, please contact me)" in the friend circle, call strangers "husband" and "wife" to form a couple in the circle.
Just like a miniature Internet, cyberbullying and online fraud also occur here.
As her popularity grew, Qian Mo told us that someone frequently harassed and even insulted her verbally, using the fact that she was studying in a vocational high school as a reason to attack her. Later, she found out that the other person was just a 14 - year - old girl, and they had never even communicated. She didn't know where the malice came from. She was also often impersonated. Some people sold bots and scammed money in her name, and some people, seeing her financial strength, asked her to borrow money on the pretext of buying a spare phone because theirs was confiscated. Eventually, they borrowed thousands of yuan from the whole circle and then disappeared. After enjoying the glory of being called a "big shot", she began to get bored.
Many people, like Qian Mo, are afraid of being isolated by the group on the one hand and tired of such a vain way on the other hand. Someone angrily criticized on the social platform, "Adding friends and liking posts is just to satisfy one's own vanity. If this continues, the atmosphere will get worse and worse." But after the post became popular, they were tempted by the messages like "Add me, teacher" and added more friends.
Ling Shi recalled that in the early days of the Xiaotiancai friend circle, people would chat from history and culture to their families of origin, just to make friends, chat, and share their feelings. But with the launch of the homepage like function, an invisible hierarchical system emerged. People with a large number of homepage likes began to "discriminate" against those with fewer likes. The atmosphere in the circle became impetuous and utilitarian. "Everyone started to find ways to increase their popularity. It was no longer just about making friends. It was more like a utilitarian exchange: you like my posts, and I'll like yours."
In 2021, having tens of thousands of likes could make you a "big shot". Now, you need at least 800,000 likes to enter the threshold.
Before the launch of the "sports like" function, a smartwatch could only add a maximum of 150 friends, and each person could like a maximum of 20 times. If calculated based on 800,000 likes, a person would need to like each other's posts continuously for 267 days to become a "big shot" - many children can't wait.
These children who don't have smartphones yet are involuntarily trapped in the Internet trap.
According to the market list of Chinese children's smartwatches in the first half of 2025, Xiaotiancai ranked first with a share of 35.3%, with a year - on - year increase of 47.6%. Its market share expanded by 7.1 percentage points, and both the growth rate and increment far exceeded the industry average. As the shipment volume of Xiaotiancai smartwatches keeps rising, the "threshold" for becoming a "big shot" is also getting higher and higher.
A "big shot" with a million likes expressed his helplessness about this number game: "There are always endless homepages to like, endless dynamics to catch up on, and constantly reminding others to like my homepage. I even deleted my good friends for the sake of homepage likes. But when the number of homepage likes really reached 1 million, I wasn't that happy."
As Addictive as Playing Games
Ten years ago, the first - generation Xiaotiancai Y01 was born, launching the functions of "adding friends by tapping" and "micro - chatting". The former was eight years earlier than Apple's Name Drop function, and the latter refused to connect to instant messaging software such as WeChat and QQ, forming a closed children's social network.
In 2017, just two years after its launch, the sales volume of Xiaotiancai phone watches reached 5 million, quickly occupying half of the domestic children's smartwatch market. Also in this year, Jin Zhijiang, the founder of Xiaotiancai, analyzed the secret of success in a public speech - the core of what Xiaotiancai smartwatches solve is that there was no product in the market that could meet children's communication needs.
Since then, in addition to the basic real - time communication and positioning functions, Xiaotiancai has continuously "strengthened" the barriers of children's social interaction, integrating addictive game mechanisms into the smartwatch design.
From the very beginning of the design, the level function was a built - in system mechanism of Xiaotiancai. Using the smartwatch can earn experience points. The more you use the smartwatch, the higher your experience points will be. Another way to get experience points is to earn points, which can be obtained by adding friends, taking steps, etc.
Around 2021, the maximum level of Xiaotiancai was raised from 26 to 60. Then, mechanisms such as the friend circle, level badges, and homepage likes were successively launched - further highlighting the "social" function of the smartwatch circle.
Picture | Source: Xiaotiancai Official Flagship on Xiaohongshu
Levels and experience points are like the breadcrumbs scattered to attract birds into the cage, making countless players addicted. At the end of 2023, someone posted a screenshot of their fully - leveled Xiaotiancai smartwatch, claiming to be the first known user to reach the maximum level (level 60) naturally. To celebrate, he even bought himself a cake.
In addition, Xiaotiancai also launches different level badges to encourage users to complete tasks. By collecting a variety of social badges, users are encouraged to spend more time and energy on the smartwatch.
This skillful gamified design also stems, to some extent, from the founding gene of BBK, the parent company behind Xiaotiancai. Duan Yongping, the founder of BBK, has always had a strong interest in games. He once said, "Buffett thinks that Coca - Cola is a must - drink for people. I think that games are a must - play for people."
He implemented this "gamified" design into every product concept.
In the 1990s, in his early 30s, Duan Yongping entered the market with a Xiao Ba Wang game console. Then, he connected a keyboard to the game console and transformed it into a Xiao Ba Wang learning machine, turning a small factory with a 2 - million - yuan loss into a company with an annual output