People's Daily published: 76.6% of young people's views on marriage and childbearing are influenced by social media, algorithms breed "dare not love" and "don't know how to love"

A report titled "Internet Society and Youth Marriage and Love View Survey Report (2026)" jointly released by Beijing Normal University and social media shows that among 2,823 surveyed young people aged 18 to 35, 76.6% have their views on marriage and childbearing influenced by social media. The report points out that algorithm recommendation easily creates an overlap of three effects: information narrowing, echo chamber effect, and self-reinforcing cycle, locking young people's cognition of love and marriage into an echo chamber.

Extreme fear-mongering about marriage and overly idealized perfect partner personas on the internet respectively lead to "excessive fear" and "excessively high expectations," making people dare not love and not know how to love. The commentary suggests that regulatory authorities should issue positive guidance for marriage and love content, platforms should optimize algorithms to reduce the push of one-sided and polarized content, and universities can offer related courses, with joint efforts to create a marriage- and childbearing-friendly ecosystem.$XRP