On March 8, or International Women’s Day, a 9-year-old boy in southeastern China tried his best to please his mother, only for his efforts to go unnoticed as she was glued to her smartphone all day.
The boy’s experiences came to light first as a school writing assignment, then on Chinese social media, where it went viral and spurred emotional outpours from thousands of commenters about the impacts that smartphones are having on society.
“Today is International Women’s Day,” the text reads, “so I'd like to thank the hard work my mom does every day and do something for her. First I told her a story, but mama didn’t seem to like it and kept looking at her phone. My mood worsened. Then I thought she might appreciate it better if I were to congratulate her.
“I congratulated my mother, but she still stared at her phone, which made me even sadder. So this doesn’t work either, I thought. I will just have to give her a back massage. So I pounded her back with my best efforts, but she was still looking at her phone without a single smile. I was really sad now, so I decided to wash her feet.
“Only when I washed her feet did she stop looking at her phone. I was a little happier and told her I was doing my best. I wanted to get some praise from her when I finished, but with a serious voice she told me, ‘It’s nice of you to wash my feet today, but you should’ve put more effort into it.’
“I looked at her blankly as she walked out of the room. ‘Hurry up and write your diary!’ she said, before closing the door. This is how I spent my sad International Women’s Day.”
The post on China’s Sina Weibo social media site got over 9 million page views in less than a day, according to a report by Taizhou Evening News in Zhejiang Province, where the boy and his family live.
