Silver-haired sweet pet dramas are on the table, and short dramas are accelerating "aging-friendly"

With the development of Internet content, especially the emergence of the new form of short dramas, the elderly user group has gradually become the focus of short drama creators and platforms. Short dramas targeting the elderly have begun to be popular in the short drama market, among which short dramas with themes of life and family affection are particularly popular.

Looking back at the development of the Internet, almost every new form of content will produce content targeting the elderly user group after it develops to a certain stage. Today, this rule has also been confirmed in the development of short dramas.

Today, the short drama track is no longer just for young people. Short dramas targeting the elderly, such as "Flash Marriage at Fifty" and "The Counterattack of a Fifty-Year-Old Lady", have seen a steady increase in playback volume, becoming the dark horses of the short drama track.

Some time ago, a netizen posted on a social platform that his mother spent nearly 6,000 yuan a month watching short videos about dramas. He tried to persuade her but was ignored. Subsequently, the topic #我妈看微信短视频会多少六千勢# became a hot search on Weibo, sparking discussions among a large number of users, and the content of short dramas targeting the elderly was pushed to the forefront.

The "silver economy" has been around for several years. Why do new content presentations always target the elderly? What do the elderly watch when they watch short dramas? Is it a good business to shoot short dramas for the elderly?

1. When seniors watch short plays, they see life and family affection

In the past three months, short dramas about the lives of middle-aged and elderly people have achieved good data performance on major platforms. According to public data, in the top 10 monthly rankings of short dramas in the past three months, short dramas about the lives of middle-aged and elderly people occupy 4 to 5 seats.

Through observation of these contents, Clour found that the short plays for the middle-aged and elderly groups tend to focus on hot social life topics, such as urging marriage, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships, father-son relationships, etc., and both male and female content are involved. Among them, the mainstream of female content is loving mothers and bitter love, and sweet elderly content also accounts for a certain proportion. Male content is more about bitter fathers and refreshing dramas with hidden family identities and final reversals.

For example, an early short drama about middle-aged and elderly people called "Flash Marriage for Fifty Years" tells the story of a 50-year-old aunt, Li Xiuqin, who unexpectedly met a "domineering president" with a hidden identity during a middle-aged blind date and got married in a flash. After marriage, she experienced a series of conflicts such as her son's disobedience, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law conflicts, and recognition of relatives. In the end, she overcame the difficulties and ushered in a perfect ending of reunion. At present, the Douyin playback volume of this work has exceeded 90 million.

The picture is a screenshot of TikTok

Another work, "Silent Motherly Love", has a more direct setting for the fun point: the biological son despises his mother who comes from the countryside and doesn't even dare to acknowledge the mother-son relationship in front of his wife's family, causing his mother to be hurt in front of her in-laws. However, the adopted son of a wealthy man shows his affection and loyalty. The contrast and comparison between the brothers is used to highlight the sadness of the mother with the "ugly mother" personality, attracting the resonance of users.

In terms of short dramas for men, the short drama "Dog Father and Tiger Son" which was popular in July has a core plot that a father who works as a security guard and hides his wealthy identity meets his successful entrepreneurial son at a charity dinner. The son feels embarrassed because of his father's identity as a security guard and is ridiculed by his partners and business friends.

In addition, some humorous and funny life works are more attractive to the middle-aged and elderly groups. For example, "Love in the Hutong at Dusk" starring Sun Yue is currently being broadcast on Kuaishou. While the work has its own funny points, it also keeps up with the pulse of the times, focuses on the hot topics of the people, directly faces the various problems encountered in "twilight love", and expresses realistic care for the single middle-aged and elderly groups.

The picture shows the official poster of "Love in the Hutong at Dusk"

It is not difficult to find that short plays aimed at middle-aged and elderly people are more about building a "utopia" for them that cannot be realized in real life. For example, they hope that their efforts for their children will be understood and appreciated in the short plays, and that they can "turn on" to help their children solve various life problems. This type of problem must be close to life, but the final result is often a subversion and fantasy of reality.

These short dramas are well aware of the "cool points" in the hearts of middle-aged and elderly users, and the characters they create are all good mothers-in-law and good fathers that are hard to come by in real life. The mothers-in-law in the short dramas always consider issues from the perspective of their daughters-in-law, some fathers have hidden identities, and some can change their fate and build a perfect life for their children. The comment area is full of messages such as "You can't find such a mother-in-law in real life" and "I also hope this is my father".

Overall, the market potential of short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people has been noticed by platforms and creators. Short drama creators are trying to combine plots that have been verified by the market, such as social issues, counterattacks, sweet pets, and domineering bosses, with topics such as life and family that the middle-aged and elderly people are passionate about, thus building a short drama landscape for the middle-aged and elderly people.

However, this also brings about the key problem of this type of short drama at present - the homogeneity of content. At present, many short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people are essentially the same as those for younger people. They just put the characters and story backgrounds into the middle-aged and elderly groups. The plots, characters and even the titles of the works are very similar.

2. Emotion and companionship: middle-aged and elderly people seek satisfaction in short plays

The seventh national census data shows that there are 260 million people over the age of 60 in my country, a 5.44% increase compared to the sixth national census data. As the elderly population continues to expand, their acceptance of new things and new content is also increasing.

Taking short dramas as an example, according to data released by QuestMobile at the end of 2023, among the users of short drama applications, those under 30 years old accounted for 30.4%, those aged 31-45 accounted for 32.4%, and those aged 46 and above accounted for 37.3%. Among them, the audience of short dramas over 46 years old is 12.3% and 4.8% higher than the audience of long videos and short videos in the same age group, respectively.

Nowadays, young people are facing increasing work and life pressures, and the proportion of empty-nest elderly people is also increasing. When young people go to big cities to seek a broader world, their parents' emotional support is gone, which makes them unable to find other topics to talk about except the trivialities of firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea. Lack of companionship has become a major problem facing them.

There was once a formula circulating on the Internet: if we can only go home to spend time with our parents during the Chinese New Year for seven days a year, and we can spend a maximum of 11 hours together a day, then if our parents are 60 years old now and live to be 80 years old, the actual time we spend with our parents will be only 1,540 hours, or 64 days.

Middle-aged and elderly people need more and more companionship, and most children cannot satisfy their needs. In the short play, the various parental roles are like a microcosm of reality, giving the middle-aged and elderly groups a strong sense of involvement.
In addition, the increasing work pressure on young people has also become a topic of concern for parents.

According to interviews with Crawley, many middle-aged and elderly people once thought that they had failed to give their children the best life, but many of the parents in the short plays lived out their imaginations. This way of restarting the "second life" became an important reason for them to pay attention to the content of the short plays.

In the past, short dramas were centered around young users, but now content for young users has gradually entered the stage of stock competition, and all parties have begun to work hard on aging-friendly content. However, in this process, middle-aged and elderly users should also avoid falling into improper commercial traps, improve their ability to discern online consumption, and choose regular platforms and channels for viewing.

For short play creators, the process of making short plays suitable for the elderly should not just be theoretical thinking and experimentation, but should be achieved from different aspects such as the function, content creation, and emotional experience of short plays. At present, the exploration of themes for short plays for the middle-aged and elderly is still relatively single, and more content that is closer to their emotions and lives has yet to be developed.

3. Exploring deep-seated needs, the boundaries of short drama content are always expanding

Continuous exploration of target groups and themes has diversified the content of short plays. Many short play producers have captured the emotional needs of the middle-aged and elderly, and have created a variety of relatively complex and bizarre content that is close to life. Realistic themes such as family conflicts, neighborhood relationships, and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships are combined with subversive themes such as terminal illness, suspense, and domineering bosses to capture the empathy and satisfaction of the middle-aged and elderly.

In the integration of the silver economy and short dramas, short dramas for middle-aged and elderly people not only enrich the content needs of the elderly, but also promote mutual understanding and communication between them and young people. However, in this process, the characteristics of middle-aged and elderly people's use of the Internet make it difficult to form high-frequency and high-return, which is in conflict with the short-term and fast monetization method pursued by short dramas.

Therefore, for short drama creators, they need to think more about what kind of content themes and operating models are more suitable for middle-aged and elderly people. Whether it is returning to the traditional model or finding another way, this will be a difficulty as well as an opportunity.

References:

I follow short dramas about middle-aged and elderly people on Douyin and Kuaishou: The more embarrassing it is, the more I want to watch it/Kaipiao Finance

Flash marriage, raising children, and fighting daughters-in-law: short dramas about the elderly have become a new traffic star/Shen Xiang

A sweet drama for the elderly, hunting down parents/True Story Research Room