近年来，微短剧作为一种融合了短视频与网络剧的新型媒介，正迅速渗透到年轻人的日常生活中。根据北京大学国家发展研究院的《2025年中国微短剧产业发展格局与就业拉动效应测算报告》，中国微短剧市场的规模从2020年的不足10亿元人民币，迅速膨胀至2025年的千亿元人民币，五年内增长了近100倍。DataEye研究院的数据进一步指出，2025年中国微短剧及漫剧的全年产值已接近同期电影票房的两倍，其中18至40岁的青年群体占据了用户总量的54%，是该市场毋庸置疑的消费主力。

然而，伴随微短剧的流行，一种引人深思的现象出现了：青年观众一边抱怨其内容“土俗”，一边却又沉迷其中，欲罢不能。这种矛盾而复杂的情感状态，促使本研究基于对17位微短剧青年爱好者的深度访谈，试图探究微短剧如何满足了青年的情感需求，以及在多大程度上反映了当代青年的现实处境。

微短剧为何成为“情感代糖”

在食品工业中，代糖的特性在于能够提供即时的甜味（带来明显的愉悦感），却不含实际热量。微短剧所提供的 Thus, "weak attention" viewing modes make micro-dramas an emotional buffer for young people in their high-energy lives, transforming the complex, ambiguous, and uncertain pressures of the real world into simple, direct, and controllable emotional release in the virtual world. Though artificial sweeteners are not real sugar, they are effortless to consume.

The Four Facets of "Emotional Sweeteners"

Although young people are aware of the fictional nature of micro-drama plots and understand their "feel-good" tropes, this does not prevent them from deriving genuine emotional satisfaction from them. Through in-depth interviews with 17 young micro-drama enthusiasts, this emotional satisfaction can be categorized into four intertwined types.

Escapist Emotions. German philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out that the 21st century has transitioned from a disciplinary society to an achievement society, where self-accountability for performance replaces external control, leading to widespread emotional exhaustion and psychological depletion. In the face of pressure, micro-dramas offer young people an emotional space through "feel-good" narratives to temporarily suspend their real-world worries. As one interviewee stated, "Some pain is truly painful, and temporary avoidance is also a way; not all problems require us to confront them head-on." However, this avoidance cannot truly escape the logic of the achievement society. The narrative core of protagonists achieving comebacks through rebirth or transmigration in micro-dramas still replicates mainstream success values, and the sense of victory gained by young people during viewing is more like an emotional illusion compensating for their real-world circumstances.

Controlled Emotions. In work and social settings, young people often need to continuously perform emotions to maintain their social image, leading to long-term suppression of their true feelings. In micro-dramas, this dynamic is reversed: they can freely choose plot segments, control playback speed, and even exit at any time, fast-forwarding the progress bar if the protagonist isn't "feeling good." "I'm already mentally drained at work, so I refuse to be mentally drained in micro-dramas," stated one interviewee concisely and powerfully, demonstrating a practice of anti-emotional labor. The emotional energy expended in daily life is repaid in this small virtual space, even if it's just the "power of life and death" over a micro-drama, which can bring tangible psychological compensation.

Dependent Emotions. Amidst increasing social mobility, more and more young people drift alone in unfamiliar cities. Traditional family ties and community support are gradually loosening, and solitude has become the norm for many. Micro-dramas fill this void, offering not only the plot itself but also real-time interaction through bullet comments and comment sections, as well as light social engagement by recommending the same drama to friends. One interviewee mentioned, "I'm working away from home now and don't have friends in the same city, so I can only recommend dramas I've been watching to my friends." The sense of belonging provided by micro-dramas, though not stable, is readily available, becoming a way for young people to rebuild connections within loose social networks.

Wasted Emotions. Several interviewees confessed, "Binge-watching short dramas is very relaxing, even though I know it's meaningless." On one hand, they are fully aware that such leisure activities bring no tangible value; on the other hand, they crave pure downtime, carving out breathing space for themselves amidst the high pressure of work and societal expectations. The deliberate pursuit of "meaninglessness" expresses young people's counteraction to "meaning overload." Micro-dramas play a dual role, serving as a pause button in their accelerated lives and as a mirror reflecting their deep-seated loneliness.

These four types of emotions intertwine, forming two pairs of inherent contradictions. Avoidance and dependence are in opposition: young people simultaneously use micro-dramas to suspend real-world anxiety and eagerly seek emotional resonance within this virtual space, craving connection while attempting to escape. Control and waste are intertwined: young people enjoy the right to arbitrarily dispose of viewing content, yet they clearly know it's merely entertainment to pass the time. Thus, the contradictory experiences of wanting to escape yet yearning to belong, of controlling everything yet feeling profoundly empty, constitute the fluid and authentic emotional landscape of contemporary youth while watching micro-dramas.

The Real-World Boundaries of "Emotional Sweeteners"

The emotional satisfaction provided by micro-dramas is real, but its boundaries are equally clear. Just as artificial sweeteners can mimic sweetness but cannot provide true nutrition, micro-dramas can precisely respond to the accumulated emotional needs of young people in their high-energy lives but cannot address the root causes that create these needs. After the "feel-good" sensation fades, the pressures of reality remain unchanged. Furthermore, the commercial logic of micro-dramas itself exacerbates these pressures. Some platforms habitually set paid checkpoints at crucial plot points, guiding young people into continuous consumption through small fees, causing viewers to be unknowingly drawn into the consumption process, deepening their immersion and dependence on the medium. The narrative logic, centered on attracting attention, solidifies characters into symbolic archetypes like "beautiful, strong, tragic" or "white lotus," and compresses plots into assembly lines that generate "feel-good" moments and plot twists, prioritizing the constant occupation of attention over narrative coherence. Long-term immersion can paradoxically strengthen young people's reliance on instant gratification.

In conclusion, labeling micro-drama binge-watching as youthful self-indulgence is neither fair nor accurate. The micro-drama craze reflects the collective mindset of contemporary youth actively seeking respite and solace under the dual pressures of intensifying competition and a lack of emotional support. Therefore, in a state where "the drama ends but the people linger," it is more worthwhile to delve deeper into where and how to access the genuine nourishment that cannot be replaced, behind the prevalence of "emotional sweeteners."

(Authors Wang Zhihao and Leng Xiaoyu are both doctoral students at the School of Social Sciences, Renmin University of China.)

Authors: Wang Zhihao, Leng Xiaoyu Source: China Youth Daily