“Digital Pickles”: The “Loneliness Cure” for Today’s Young People?

Foodthink Speaks

“Digital pickles” refers to the short videos, variety shows, classic dramas, novels, and all manner of entertainment content people watch on their phones while eating. It is widely believed, particularly among young people, to be a remedy for the loneliness and boredom of eating alone.

But the story of “digital pickles” goes far deeper than that. In this edition of Foodthink’s “Eat Something Good” column, readers describe “digital pickles” in richer, more vivid terms – some even tinged with conflict and ambivalence.

Some readers say it is precisely because they want to eat well that they need “digital pickles” to bring more flavour to a meal. Yet others report that “digital pickles” do not necessarily help people dispel negative emotions; if anything, their well-being deteriorates further, and they may even lose awareness of the food’s own taste on the plate.

Others believe there is no need to be so harsh about one’s dependence on digital pickles, since it is closely tied to shifts in lifestyle and even emotional states. They also shared how, in more positive settings, they find they simply don’t need them at all. This echoes some readers’ views in the second edition of “Eat Something Good” on “How to Eat When You Don’t Order a Takeaway”.

Whether “digital pickles” create a dependency does not seem to be a particularly urgent matter. But research teams have already found that being absorbed in devices while eating increases total calorie intake by 15%, and may lead to gastric dysfunction, dyspepsia, nutritional imbalance, and other problems. Perhaps we ought now, starting from the phenomenon of “digital pickles”, to think seriously about what it truly means to “eat well” in a modern society where loneliness and acceleration coexist – and how people might actually achieve it.

The Lonely Diners

Today, more and more people are getting used to eating alone, and “digital pickles” have become the “cure” for the loneliness and boredom that accompany a solitary meal. The classic dramas and popular variety shows people passionately discuss, along with danmaku flying in from every corner of the country, have become the fastest way for them to connect with the world from within a life of solitude.

@芝士: I want to eat well even when I’m on my own, which is why I can’t help picking up my phone. As a child, meals with the whole family tasted wonderful. After I grew up and came to work in a big city, eating became a bit of an afterthought. But I can’t quite abandon a small standard – after all, I can’t just sit there silently devouring a meal alone, can I? That would be nothing short of becoming a living corpse. Once, I’d just opened a takeaway order when my phone died. In my rented room, the only socket was by the bed, so I sat there quietly charging it to 15% just to make sure I could watch a video and finish my meal. Charging was pure agony, so I started searching for a show to watch alongside my food. By the time I actually started eating, half an hour had passed and the food had gone a bit cold.

@小赵: I usually watch for about half an hour to an hour – dramas, variety shows, Bilibili. Eating on its own gets a little dull; I need some sound and images to liven things up. And for someone living alone like me, it makes the room feel less empty.

◉”Mealtime variety shows” recommended on Xiaohongshu. Image source: Xiaohongshu screenshot

@山山: Digital pickles enrich the details of eating and living alone. Especially when you find a really good one, it feels like pure happiness.

@耶耶: I watch film and TV recaps, or if there’s a series I’m following, I’ll watch that – at least forty minutes. It’s mostly a feeling of enjoyment; you feel accompanied, and the act of eating becomes joyful, something to look forward to. Sometimes at midday, everyone in the dorm excitedly grabs their takeaway, each picking their own mealtime video, and then we all watch and eat in comfortable silence.

@LTT: Whether I use digital pickles depends on whether I’m eating alone. On my own, I eat extremely fast, wolfing it down as though I were an animal (though I suppose I technically am one). Sometimes I spend over two hours cooking a proper meal, then finish it in ten minutes. Eating so quickly leaves me feeling awful once I’m full. Digital pickles force me to slow down. If an episode is over forty minutes long, surely I should be eating for at least thirty of them.

@灯下: When I’m home on holiday, I eat with my family; at university, I eat alone. If the food tastes how I hoped and I’m in a good headspace, I won’t look at my phone. Otherwise, I need digital pickles.

@Kandy: If I’m eating with family, colleagues, or a boss, digital pickles are absolutely unnecessary. But when I’m on my own, I need them for almost every lunch and dinner. It’s about half reading, half watching videos – whatever Bilibili’s algorithm recommends; I watch what catches my interest, mostly lighthearted and simple stuff. It’s simply that eating alone is too boring, so I put something on to fill the time.

@花果园子: To ease loneliness, for leisure and entertainment. And there’s another thing: digital pickles are the fastest shortcut for me to connect with the world while eating.

◉Many people who have chosen their “digital pickles” and settled in front of a screen will share what they’re eating today via danmaku. Image source: Bilibili video screenshot

@楠崽: If I start watching, I can’t stop – I’ll go from the table to the bed to staying up all night finishing it, haha. I watch dramas, variety shows, and sometimes mukbang. It gives me a sense of companionship, a feeling of time slowing down, and the sensation of being a child again, coming home after school to hide in my room and watch cartoons.

When the Tyranny of Efficiency Takes Over Eating

Sometimes, people “consume” their digital pickles simply because, amid a tense work and life rhythm, they want to squeeze as much entertainment or even knowledge as possible out of the time set aside for a meal. Eating is no longer just about eating; it has become precious time that must be used efficiently.

@ph: There was a period when work pressure was crushing. The moment I’d plated my food, I’d feel an itch inside, desperate to open Douyin. If I could also pair it with a cold bottle of Coke, that was absolute bliss. Every time I found myself in that state, I was reminded of the description by George Gissing in The Nether World of the lives of nineteenth-century British workers: “People rushed out of the factories with desperate haste, bent on making the most of those few hours, as though only in that time were they truly living for themselves.” I feel people today are still the same, perhaps even more so. At least the leisure of before was pure leisure; now the tyranny of workplace efficiency has begun to invade life itself.

◉The Nether World, widely regarded as the finest of English novelist George Gissing’s works, follows several impoverished families living in the slums of nineteenth-century London, focusing on the myriad hardships of the underclass – lack of money, unemployment, and the absence of decent living conditions.

@辞镜: Mainly I feel I want to save time – make the most of my eating hours by doing things I’m genuinely interested in.

@KL: If I’m just sitting there eating, without any particular reason, I feel oddly “empty.” A large part of that is because I’ve grown so used to a fast-paced way of life. I tend to juggle several things at once most of the time, and in fact I’m a very fast eater – on my own, I can finish a whole meal in five or ten minutes. Every time I put my chopsticks down, there’s a knot of anxiety inside: “You should be thinking about what to do next.” Watching a video alongside my meal stretches out the time I spend eating, and my brain gets a hit of fresh stimulation at the same time. It feels like I’ve gained something for nothing.

@青梦: I can’t stand the short, shallow, low-quality content on Weibo, Douyin, and Kuaishou, so I curate variety shows, dramas and films, documentaries, and podcasts instead, mostly on platforms like iQIYI, Mango TV, and Bilibili. I also choose what to watch based on my mood – when I’m dealing with period pain or feeling physically and emotionally off, I reach for something funny to level things out. I think of consuming digital pickles as making efficient use of fragmented time; it’s also my own version of “broad observation and selective adoption, deep accumulation and effortless output.” Those two or three hours are my concentrated window for gathering information and briefly turning life into something entertaining. And it doesn’t interfere with my deep reading at other times, or with connecting with real people face to face – those long, heart-to-heart conversations when we meet.

@Teresa: I tend to watch videos from a handful of Bilibili creators, and I’ll play anything they’ve made at random, whether I’ve seen it or not. I just need background sound. I feel that if I don’t watch something during meals, I simply won’t have any other time for rest and leisure.

@糟糟: For anime I go for the healing, slice-of-life kind – nothing with intense fight scenes. Movies and dramas tend to follow the same pattern; I suppose that’s because I gravitate towards things that are interesting, fantastical, or carry some deeper meaning. For a while I watched Family Guy every single day during meals. Eating on its own gets a little dull; it’s almost as though there’s a vacancy in the enjoyment and intensity of the time you spend at the table, and you need to fill it. Or maybe it’s that when you focus purely on eating, the anxiety that emptiness amplifies becomes impossible to bear without some kind of content feeding your brain?

@Hodel: I usually stick to fixed channels and creators – mostly pastoral, gardening, or food-touring content. The videos are short, just long enough for a brief escape from the tedium of work.

◉One hallmark of “digital pickles” is that they must be easy to slip into, pulling your mind swiftly away from reality. Image source: Douyin video screenshot

@山山: Life is just too exhausting – I have to squeeze my video-watching into mealtimes. I finish Korean dramas I haven’t gotten through, watch my favourite Bilibili creators, and dip into light knowledge-based cultural programmes, documentaries, stand-up, and the like. But I won’t touch short videos – they aren’t immersive enough. I’ll usually watch right through the entire meal. If the video’s good, I’ll sit there procrastinating for ages before I can bring myself to get up and do the washing-up. Sometimes I’ll even keep shaving time off my lunch break just to get a few more minutes of pleasure.

@麻花: I love Western sitcoms, mostly ones I’ve seen many times over. I rarely start a new series during a meal, though I do follow super-long runs like Law & Order. I won’t watch anything with an obvious ideological bias that makes me feel offended – a lot of older Western shows, for instance, carry heavy colonialist or white-male-centred undertones. I lean towards “harmless little comfort watches.” I basically never watch anything that demands serious thinking while I eat; eating is a rare chance to let my mind go blank.

Quenching Thirst with Imagined Plums

For those who love mukbang and food videos, “digital pickles” can also serve as a kind of meal substitute.

@王定一: How long I watch ranges from ten minutes to an hour, depending on a lot of factors. My current digital pickle is Taohuawu, Season Five. Before that I loved food variety shows – Three Meals a Day, Wild Kitchen, Back to Field, that sort of thing. What I demand most from a digital pickle is the immersive feel of long-form video. The dopamine from the food combined with the immersive companionship of the digital pickle gives me double the pleasure. My food doesn’t actually taste better, but the overall five-sense experience of the meal is richer.

@花果园子: Music, films, novels – anything. When I’m feeling low, I play the most energising tracks I can find, like a shot of adrenaline – I come back to life. When I’ve got no appetite, I put on gorgeous food content, and somehow I can manage a couple more bites.

@KL: I like mukbang, roast-style videos, and reality shows – the kind that keeps things light and fun. Food videos do more of a “quenching thirst with imagined plums” job for me; they’re essentially a digital cheat meal. While I’m watching, my brain and my mouth are in a sort of “body eating here, heart feasting over there” tug-of-war, haha.

◉Food has become an enormously popular niche theme within variety programmes. Pictured: a screenshot from the recently trending food competition show One Meal to Glory. Image source: One Meal to Glory

Eating Becomes Just Chewing

But some readers say that watching videos doesn’t make food taste better at all – instead, they stop noticing the food’s own flavour. Eating becomes mere chewing, and their meals turn tasteless.

@Hina: I usually watch while waiting for my food to arrive; how much I watch once I start eating varies – anywhere from a few minutes to several dozen. I rarely watch variety shows because they’re too loud. Otherwise I catch up on dramas or pop on an interview show, preferring a gentler, warmer tone. A video provides a sort of proxy companionship, but it doesn’t make the food taste any better, and it pulls my attention away from eating. Not very healthy.

@王定一: Sometimes digital pickles actually drain the flavour from my food.

@zoe: I watch a lot of sitcoms – shows like The IT Crowd and Frasier. Mostly it’s because my own cooking isn’t great, so there’s no need to savour the flavour. Watching a show while eating helps shift my attention away from my cooking. The plots are gripping, but they don’t make the food taste any better.

@梦: Videos usually make us more oblivious to the taste experience – before you know it, the meal is over.

@王维: When I have lunch, I look around and nearly everyone is scrolling on their phone, watching short dramas, and they seem so happy – as if this is a rare moment of relaxation. I feel like these videos make them completely forget the taste of the food; eating becomes nothing more than a subconscious action. It’s all about chewing – so disrespectful to the food.

@山山: Watching videos while eating gives you this immersive pleasure and helps release the pressures of life. It doesn’t make the food taste better, but I still lean on it heavily.

I Felt Like I Might Be a Little Dead

It is often said that “digital pickles” can ease loneliness, yet they also carry the risk of scattering people’s attention, draining their desire to connect, and pushing them further into suppressed emotions and lives.

@可可：Actually, digital pickles aren’t always tied to loneliness or low spirits. Even when I’m in a really good mood, I feel like putting something on. But if you rely on them to get through every meal from dawn to dusk for a whole week straight, something starts to go wrong. I absolutely dread thinking about that period. One year I spent the entire summer home alone, eating takeaway every single day, then watching all kinds of film and TV recaps – mainly Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Yongzheng Dynasty – and once I’d finished, I’d just lie there. The only way I can describe that stretch is bleak beyond words. Every time I tidied up the takeaway bags, I’d collapse on the bed, and in that moment I felt like I might be a little dead, and I simply couldn’t pull myself up.

◉Takeaway allows people to eat without ever leaving home, but it also draws each person further inward, until all that’s left is a pile of takeaway rubbish stacked up in the stairwell. Image source: Foodthink

@花果园子: If my phone runs out of battery or sauce splashes onto it, I just stop watching. Or if I can’t find a good spot to prop the phone up, I give up too. So sometimes when I eat with my phone, my energy isn’t that high either. I’ve thought about breaking free from digital pickles – after all, they scatter your focus and lead to poor concentration in everyday life. And watching them all the time gets tiresome; you start to lose interest in everything, reaching a point where nothing feels like fun anymore.

@梦: It seems I can’t do both things at once – either I get so absorbed in the video that I forget to eat, or I bury my head in my food and miss the video details. Either way, I feel uneasy. I’ve noticed my husband sometimes watches short videos while eating – mostly light topics like sudden weather news or cat and dog videos. If the video is emotionally intense, information-heavy, or runs a bit long, he just scrolls past. I can sense that he doesn’t actually feel relaxed because of those short videos either; it’s more like being numbed, being sucked in.

@山山: Being in a relationship once helped me break free from digital pickles. I made a pact with my partner – we wouldn’t be one of those couples who hunch over their food, each staring at a phone – and we actually stuck to it. When eating out, we’d chat over the meal; at home, we’d share shows we liked and watch them together. After we split up, I went back to watching digital pickles while eating – if I couldn’t find one, I’d skip the meal and keep searching.

Do You Want to Break Free of “Digital Pickles”?

It seems people’s attitudes toward “digital pickles” remain deeply conflicted and ambivalent. So after all that weighing up, what choices do they make? And what attempts have they made to break free of “digital pickles”?

@Hina: For a while my phone addiction was so bad I couldn’t put it down even while eating. Later I read some psychology books about practices like expressing gratitude before a meal, plating food properly, observing it carefully as you eat, chewing each bite slowly, holding food in reverence… These small methods are really just ways of reclaiming your attention from the phone’s virtual world back to reality. If you stick with them and do them mindfully, you can break free from digital pickles – though I still sometimes feel the urge to pick up my phone during a meal.

@灯下: I’ve trained myself to stop eating whenever I pick up my phone to scroll, then put the phone down before resuming my meal. It helps me ignore the taste of the food and the tedium of eating alone. But sometimes I can’t really take in the video content this way, which stretches the meal even longer, and I get irritated again.

◉Scrolling your phone while eating has become such a commonplace way of dining for people today that hardly anyone bats an eye. Image source: Foodthink

@王维: My advice is to start by cultivating awareness – rediscovering the sacredness of a meal is one way, and mindful eating is worth trying too. Also, scrolling videos is probably how many people relieve stress, so finding breakthroughs in stress management can help. Finally, video platforms are inherently skilled at guiding and manipulating attention, so step outside that frame and observe it. Once you see how it works, you’re no longer fooled by it, and you’re free.

@KL: I do want to break free from digital pickles, because after I finish eating, I leave a mess of dishes on the table for ages without clearing them, which directly disrupts my schedule for the rest of the day and ends up in a rush followed by regret. When I’m not busy, one meal with a video running can stretch to over two hours – far beyond a normal eating time. By the end, the food has long passed its best moment, which feels really bad. But I haven’t actually tried any concrete strategies yet.

@辞镜: I don’t feel there’s any need to quit. For someone who eats alone, it works well for regulating emotions, unless it’s genuinely affecting your physical health. Digital pickles are perhaps just a placebo for using up your time. Only something more important or meaningful can replace them.

@王定一: I never thought about it before, but then I realised the relentless continuity of these digital pickles makes it hard for me to leave this “virtual” world after finishing my meal, and I end up putting off study time, housework, and everything else, so I’ve started deliberately limiting my digital-pickle intake. I’ve tried controlling my video-watching time, but it’s still hard to resist the instant dopamine hit from shows like Taohuawu.

Sometimes the problem isn’t ‘digital pickles’ themselves – it’s whether your life is rich enough. My most unforgettable experience was in Guantang Xincun in Chengdu. I sat by the field eating, and through the gaps in the Miscanthus sinensis, I could catch glimpses of mountains, forests, and open fields. In that moment, my phone was utterly useless. The experience of a new scene was, in itself, the most exquisite “pickle” of all.

@Teresa: I’ve thought about it, especially when I realise I’ve developed a habit of needing to watch or listen to videos no matter what I’m doing. My head is always swimming with video content, and I can’t think for myself, or concentrate on recalling what I’ve just learned or seen and form my own opinion.

@糟糟: I’m not sure, but lately I genuinely don’t feel like watching videos while eating. Perhaps it’s connected to the fact that I haven’t been well recently and was diagnosed with a pulmonary nodule, so I’m more health-conscious than ever. I feel that eating mindfully is really important for physical health – it’s even pleasant. When I feel unwell, I close my eyes and meditate, tuning into my body. I’ve also learned through intuition and appetite that sometimes I genuinely crave more vegetables and less meat.

Using Food as a Medium to “Rebuild the Nearby”

Many readers believe that if you find yourself in a healthier social or emotional relationship, you naturally won’t need ‘digital pickles’ anymore – eating instead becomes a medium for connecting with family, partners, and friends. In fact, the very existence of ‘digital pickles’ reflects the fact that when it comes to eating, people still crave connection with others and with the world. This in turn prompts us to consider: how can we use food as a bridge to rebuild our connection with the people nearby?

@Hodel: When I eat with others, I don’t look at my phone – especially when there are topics to discuss and the company feels effortless. Returning to the act of eating itself is actually a way of being kinder to your body, and it’s also a moment when we build connections with others. The benefits are numerous, of course. When ‘digital pickles’ become the only companion you have outside of work, choosing them is a “choice with no choice”.

@KL: When I’m dining with friends, there’s simply no time to look at my phone. Another situation: if the place has a lovely view, eating alone while gazing at the scenery feels peaceful too. Oh, and there’s one more – when there’s gossip nearby, whether about people or little animals. Fresh, close-up happenings right in front of your eyes are far more interesting than my phone at those moments.

@梦: I think eating alone, or eating with friends while watching a slow-paced long-form video together, is a lovely thing. But if my husband is eating with me while scrolling short videos on his phone, I’ll endure it for a while and then let him know I’m unhappy, because I feel ignored. I’ll try to find a shared topic and push back against the phone’s pull through conversation. Sometimes I succeed – when I tell an interesting story – and sometimes I fail, usually when he’s not in a great mood that day.

@Hina: When I eat with my family, I don’t pick up my phone. I don’t get much time to spend with my parents, and meals are our moments of togetherness.

◉A Bilibili creator who specifically delivers food made by northern students’ mothers to them as they work in the south has moved many viewers to tears. Sometimes we don’t need to look outside for meaning in a meal – the food itself already holds important emotions. Image source: Bilibili @北饭南调

@王定一: When I eat with others, I don’t watch videos. On my dopamine priority list, chatting with family, friends or clients over a meal – exchanging ideas, broadening perspectives, sharing stories – these satisfy me far more. I feel “digital pickles” are a little side dish for people living in the atomised society of cities, but the moment I go back to my hometown, to the rural village of familiar faces, I simply don’t need them. I think digital pickles have a two-sided quality. If they could be categorised by audience, identity badges assigned, and a dedicated vertical community set up, people could share their digital pickles, discuss matters of fact, and swap viewpoints – that would be a fascinating experiment. We “rebuild the nearby” through food, keep each other company, and huddle together to dig in.

@LTT: Does having a person sitting across the table mean you won’t reach for digital pickles? Sometimes a person is worse than a digital pickle! As a child, TV dramas always showed families chatting happily around the dinner table, but my household was the complete opposite – cooking could take two hours, yet eating lasted just ten minutes. My parents said nothing, the meal ended quickly, and everyone scattered to do their own thing. So I always fantasised about what it would feel like, after a long day’s work, to sit at the table with my family and share the day’s little revelations. Once I started my own small household, all work brought was resignation and pressure, and talking about it at the table would only deepen those memories, trapping my mind in negativity.

@耶耶: With family, I focus on eating. Sharing a meal with them feels like pure happiness.

@山山: At work meals I put my phone away – it’s forced by basic social etiquette. Truth be told, I really dislike eating with most people from work; every spare moment I want to pull out my phone and escape the world. But when I eat with people who are truly close, who can really see me, I naturally don’t watch anything. My heart feels full, and I can listen properly – and be listened to.

@楠崽: When eating with others in social settings, there are times when everyone just stares at their own phone – rather cold.

@Road: When I go out to eat with friends, I don’t touch my phone, because with good friends there’s always so much fresh news and interesting viewpoints to share and soak up that it eclipses any digital pickle. When I eat with my partner, though, we often watch dramas – not to economise on the emotional energy we give each other, but rather to draw our conversations closer, to warm the relationship. The clearest sign is that the inside jokes we share multiply; the language we use in everyday life becomes richer; we can express more complex things. Lines from My Own Swordsman crop up constantly in our conversations.

“Cooking Is a Form of Self-Healing”

When we search for meaning in eating, we often forget the meaning of cooking. Cooking is, in its essence, an intimate process of engaging with food and nature. Sometimes the happiness and satisfaction it brings is more than enough to heal the monotony and scarcity of everyday life.

@sora: Loneliness is a symptom of modern life, and “digital pickles” are the cure – though sometimes for me they feel more like drinking poison to quench one’s thirst; nothing seems to fully satisfy. Then I realised: it’s only when I cook for myself that that loneliness is truly eased. Through the whole process – hands moving, eyes watching, nose catching the aromas, ears tuning in – every sense comes alive. There’s a groundedness to it. And if, on top of that, I can raise a glass with my family, talking and laughing the whole time, that deep sense of fullness is something no amount of short-video scrolling can ever match.

◉Home-cooked dishes sora excels at. Image source: sora

@zoe: Actually, I quite enjoy chatting over a meal. If someone sits down to eat the food I’ve cooked, I’ll definitely comment and joke about it as we go. When I eat with others, I generally don’t look at my phone. I like talking as we eat, and I might give my verdict on the dish along the way.

@梦: When my husband reaches for digital pickles, I imagine it’s because the meal feels exactly the same as always, not compelling enough. But when he puts his all into cooking a proper meal, he won’t need any mealtime video – he’ll eat with his full attention.

@小梅: It reminds me of when I was small. Mum would labour over a meal, and she loved watching me eat with gusto, but hated it when I watched TV with only half my mind on the food. Now that I’ve started cooking for myself, I hope my family or friends will give some kind of reaction – comment on the dish, or show they’re really enjoying it – rather than scrolling through short videos, or even chatting away among themselves, which sometimes I find unbearable. Because this meal isn’t a takeaway summoned with a tap of the finger; my time, care and effort went into every bit of it. Whether I eat alone or with others, I hope we can take a moment to savour the process. That’s what makes me feel truly fulfilled.

Planning: Kairui

Editing: Yuyang