Singles' apps mirror today's South Korean society

In a country where 31.7 percent of households are made up of a single individual, an app that helps manage household tasks independently is trending on smartphones. While dating sites continue to propagandize the barriers between the economic elites ("golden spoon") and the lower social classes ("dirty spoon").

Seoul (AsiaNews) - With the advent of smartphones, digital technologies have changed almost every aspect of daily life. From what we cook, to physical activity, from what we watch at night before going to sleep, to communicating with our loved ones: the apps we have installed on our phones set the rhythms of each day and have thus become a mirror of society.

This is especially true in South Korea, where 95 percent of the population owns a smartphone, according to data presented in a Pew Research Center report. The South Korean digital app market is a high-growth sector with some notable peculiarities. For example, the most widely used search engine in the country is not Google but Naver, an online platform that originated in Korea itself, which underscores the fierce competitiveness of South Korean companies in the global digital landscape. However, it is the more personal applications that give a more accurate portrait of South Korean society.

As reported by The Korea Herald, single-person family apps are becoming increasingly common. King of Honjok, for example, is an app that helps establish good housekeeping habits: the user can set alarm clocks and reminders to clean, cook, or do other household tasks with a set deadline. It is no coincidence that this app has achieved success in Korea, where according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, 31.7 percent of South Korean households consist of one individual. The figure has been on the rise for years and reflects a profound social change, whereby young people are marrying less and less as they are more inclined to accept a solitary lifestyle untethered from traditional family values. In Korean, precisely, "honjok."

Another feature observable through the South Korean digital ecosystem is the pitiless stratification and social hierarchy and the persistence of deep disparities in gender roles. Among the dating apps is one called Gold Spoon, whose advertisement reads "date affluent guys selected by us, we carefully assess candidates' financial assets by checking their employment contracts and real estate." Women, on the other hand, must upload a selfie of themselves to register, and can only enroll if they receive a rating of at least 3.6 points out of 5 can. The name of the app recalls a common terminology in Korea that a "golden spoon" is an individual belonging to the country's socioeconomic elites while a "dirty spoon" is an individual belonging to the lower strata of society.

Finally, South Korean society's response to the pandemic can also be read through app data. As noted by the JoongAng Daily website, last April the government lifted all existing anti-Covid restrictions and South Koreans took the opportunity to take back some of their offline lives. Online purchases in April, although up from 2021, were down from the previous month. Ditto for home food deliveries, transportation services and digital entertainment. Some habits, however, look set to remain, such as apps that allow South Koreans to split the costs (which have risen sharply in recent pandemic months) of digital services such as Netflix, Youtube Premium or Coupang.

• South Korea
• Seoul
• app
• digital technologies
• smartphone
• singles
• family
• society