![]() ![]() The average user spent 139 mins each month on the app to call and 68 million videos have been posted each day in 2017 (all numbers taken from, 2017). In September 2017, 902 million individuals logged in daily to WeChat and 38 billion messages have been sent over this platform every day. Additional numbers on WeChat behavior have been reported recently underlining the importance of WeChat. This red envelope function became immediately so successful that more than 768 million individuals participated in sending and receiving red envelopes during the six-day Spring Festival holiday in 2018 ( Xinhua, 2018). This function mirrors the Chinese tradition to exchange monetary gifts via a red envelope (in particular during the Chinese Spring Festival). In fact, increasingly organizations, e.g., enterprises, universities, and governments, have utilized a WeChat-Public-Account as a channel to transmit information to specific users and interact with them.Īn important new feature was added to WeChat in January 2014, with the inclusion of the red envelope (, hóngbāo) function. ![]() The function of WeChat-Public-Account enables users to get any kinds of information when they follow a distinct public account. From a different angle, WeChat can be seen as a platform to acquire various information. Indeed, WeChat must be seen in broader terms than “just” being social media. It is of importance to mention that the social media part of this smartphone application represents only one relevant aspect of WeChat. In line with the features of WhatsApp, its Chinese counterpart offers free video and voice call features and a large range of emoticons to emphasize the emotional state of the users. In the context of social media use, the core functions of WeChat include messaging services with other users and/or sharing photos/videos via the moments function. The multipurpose platform WeChat integrates a variety of services such as messaging, socialization, and mobile payment services, and steadily expands its functionality by integrating new services such as city services allowing users, e.g., to book transportation or to pay for traffic fines in China’s metropolitan areas. WeChat presents a multipurpose smartphone application, going beyond the features offered by its counterpart WhatsApp popular in Western countries. With currently more than one billion monthly active users ( Tencent, 2018), it has become one of the most important applications on smartphones in China. WeChat (, Wēixìn, micro-message) was first released by the Chinese multinational company Tencent Holding Limited in January 2011. The direct comparison of WeChat’s influence on the mentioned variables compared with its competitors Facebook and WhatsApp often used in Western countries will also be of high importance. In the context of the growing popularity and increasing usage times of the app – in particular in Asian countries – future research seems warranted to examine systematically how social media platforms such as WeChat will affect interpersonal communication behavior, well-being, and mental health. The present review summarizes the literature on this topic with a focus on the motives to engage in using the app and potential detrimental effects of excessive use. Although WeChat has become an integral part of everyday life for many users, research has only recently begun to examine the impact of this development on the societal and individual levels. Against this background, the present review aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive overview on the functionality of this application, comparison with other popular applications such as Facebook/WhatsApp and previous research. Despite its enormous number of users in Asia, WeChat is still not well known in Western countries. With currently over one billion monthly active users, the Chinese social media and multipurpose application WeChat (, Wēixìn, micro-message) has become one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. 3School of Information Management, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.2neuSCAN Laboratory, The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.1Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany. ![]() Christian Montag 1,2*, Benjamin Becker 2 and Chunmei Gan 3*
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