Digital Side Dish: The “Loneliness Antidote” for Today’s Young People?

Foodthink Says

The term “digital side dish” refers to the short videos, variety shows, classic dramas, novels and all manner of entertainment people consume on their phones while eating. It is widely understood that young people, in particular, use it to ease the loneliness and tedium of dining alone.

Yet the story behind the “digital side dish” is far richer than that. In this edition of Foodthink’s “Eat Well” column, readers offer descriptions that are more vivid, more varied – and at times conflicted or even contradictory.

Some readers say that it is precisely their desire to eat properly that makes them need a “digital side dish” to give a simple meal more flavour. Others, however, report that a digital side dish does not always genuinely help dispel negative feelings; life can in fact become worse, to the point of ignoring the taste of the food itself.

Still others feel there is no need to be overly critical of a reliance on digital side dishes, since the habit is closely tied to changes in people’s lifestyles and emotional states. They also shared what it feels like, in more positive circumstances, to find they do not need one at all. This echoes what some readers said in the second instalment of “Eat Well” about “How to Eat Without Takeaway”.

Whether a reliance on digital side dishes truly amounts to a dependency does not seem especially pressing. Yet research teams have already found that being absorbed in devices during meals increases total calorie intake by 15 per cent and can lead to gastric dysfunction, indigestion, nutritional imbalances and other problems. Perhaps we ought now to take the “digital side dish” phenomenon as a starting point for a serious reflection: in a modern society where loneliness and acceleration coexist, what does eating properly truly mean? And how can we manage it?

Lonely Diners

More and more people are growing accustomed to eating alone, and the digital side dish has become the “antidote” to loneliness and boredom at the table. The classic dramas and popular variety shows they raved about, along with the danmaku – live-scrolling comments – flying in from every corner of the internet, became the quickest way for them to feel connected to the world amid their solitary lives.

@芝士: Even on my own, I still want to eat properly – so I end up reaching for my phone without thinking. As a child, a family meal was a wonderful thing. After I moved to a big city for work, meals became more of a routine. But I still care about what I eat; I cannot just sit there silently polishing off a plate by myself – that would really be like being a walking dead person. Once, I had just opened my takeaway when my phone went flat. The only plug socket in my rented room was by the bed, so I sat there quietly by the bed, charging my phone until it reached 15 per cent, just enough to get through the meal with a video. The whole charging process was agony. I started hunting for a mealtime video at the same time; by the time I finally sat down to eat, half an hour had gone by and the food had gone a bit cold.

@小赵: I usually watch for half an hour to an hour – dramas, variety shows, Bilibili. Eating in silence is a little tedious; you need some sound and pictures to stir things up. And for someone living alone like me, it makes the room feel less empty.

◉Recommendations for mealtime variety shows on Xiaohongshu. Source: Xiaohongshu screenshot

@山山: A digital side dish adds richness to the small details of eating and living alone, and when you stumble on a good one, it feels like a genuine pleasure.

@耶耶: I watch film and TV recaps, and if there is a series I am currently following, I stick to that – at least forty minutes at a stretch. It is mostly a sense of enjoyment; you feel company, and eating becomes something happy, something to look forward to. At midday in the dorm, we all get quite excited, take our takeaways, pick out our mealtime videos and then quietly watch them while we eat, each to ourselves.

@LTT: Whether I watch a digital side dish depends on whether I am eating on my own. Eating alone, I eat extremely fast, gulping it down as though I were an animal (which, admittedly, I am). Sometimes I spend over two hours cooking a proper meal and then finish it in ten minutes; I eat so fast that I feel awful once I am full. Watching a digital side dish forces me to slow down. An episode runs forty-odd minutes – surely I cannot manage it in under thirty.

@灯下: During the holidays I eat with my family; at university I can only eat alone. If the food turns out as good as I hoped and I am in good spirits, I do not reach for my phone. Otherwise, I need a digital side dish.

@Kandy: If I am eating with family, colleagues or a superior, I definitely do not need one – but when it is just me, I almost always need one for lunch and dinner. I spend about half my time reading and half watching videos; I go by Bilibili’s algorithm – whatever catches my eye – and it is mostly light and easy. I simply find eating alone too tedious, so I watch something to fill the time.

@花果园子: It eases loneliness and provides a bit of entertainment. And there is another thing: a digital side dish is the fastest way I know of, mid-meal, to feel connected to the wider world.

◉Many people who have settled in front of a screen with a carefully chosen “digital side dish” use the danmaku to share what they are having that day. Source: Bilibili video screenshot

@楠崽: If I do start watching, I cannot stop – I go from sitting at the table to lying on my bed and finishing it all in one sitting through the night, haha. I watch dramas, variety shows, and sometimes mukbang; it gives me a sense of company, a feeling that time has slowed down, like the days when I was a child, coming home from school and hiding in my room to watch cartoons.

When the Tyranny of Efficiency Invades the Dinner Table

Sometimes people consume a “digital side dish” simply because they hope, amid the relentless pace of work and daily life, to squeeze a little more entertainment – or even knowledge – out of the time set aside for eating. A meal is no longer about eating itself; it must be a block of time put to productive use.

@ph: For a while I was under enormous pressure at work. The moment I had my food, I felt an itch and could not wait to open Douyin; if I could grab a bottle of ice-cold Coke to go with it, that was absolute bliss. Every time I caught myself in that state, I thought of George Gissing’s depiction of working-class life in nineteenth-century England in The Nether World: “They poured eagerly out of the factory, bent on making the most of those few hours, as though only in that brief interval were they truly living for themselves.” I think people today are much the same – perhaps even more so. The leisure of old was at least pure leisure; now the tyranny of efficiency from work has begun to invade life itself.

◉Hell. Widely recognised as the finest of British novelist George Gissing’s works, the story centres on several impoverished families living in the slums of nineteenth-century London and focuses on the predicaments faced by the lower classes – poverty, unemployment and the absence of any decent standard of living.

@辞镜: I mostly just want to save time and make the most of mealtime by doing things I enjoy.

@KL: If I just eat without watching anything, I feel a strange kind of emptiness. A big part of that is how used I am to a fast-paced life – I juggle multiple tasks at once most days. And I am a fast eater; on my own, I can finish a meal in five or ten minutes. Every time I finish eating, I get this nervous feeling that I should already be thinking about what is next. Watching a video alongside a meal stretches out how long I spend eating, while my brain gets some fresh stimulation. It feels like getting something for nothing.

@青梦: I dislike the shallow, fast-paced, low-quality content on Weibo, Douyin and Kuaishou, so I handpick variety shows, films and TV series, documentaries and podcasts instead, mainly on iQIYI, Mango TV, Bilibili and similar platforms. I also match what I watch to my mood – especially during period pain or when I am feeling physically or emotionally rough, I pick comedies to take the edge off. I think consuming a digital side dish is a high-efficiency use of fragmented time, and also a process of reading broadly, absorbing selectively, and building up depth slowly before it shines forth. Those two or three hours are a brief interlude where I gather information in a concentrated burst and let life feel a little playful, without getting in the way of my deep reading during the rest of the day, or connecting face to face with real people, or those long, intimate conversations over cups of tea when we meet in person.

@Teresa: I stick to a handful of Bilibili creators and just shuffle-play whatever videos they have made, whether or not I have seen them before. I need background sound. If I do not watch a video while eating, it feels like I would never find any other time to relax.

@糟糟: I generally pick healing-style anime with no intense fight scenes, and I am the same with films and TV shows – perhaps because I gravitate towards things that are funny, fantastical, or carry some deeper meaning. For a while I watched Family Guy at every meal. Eating in silence is a little tedious, almost as if there is a slot at the table – a window of time and a level of pleasure – waiting to be filled, so I fill it. Or maybe it is that focusing purely on eating makes the anxiety, magnified by the emptiness of having no input at all, almost unbearable?

@Hodel: I tend to watch the same channels and creators, mostly pastoral, gardening and food-hopping content. The clips are very short – just enough for a tiny escape from tedious, monotonous work.

◉A key feature of a “digital side dish” is that it must be easy to slip into, letting the brain swiftly detach from reality. Source: Douyin video screenshot

@山山: Life is so exhausting that I have to squeeze watching videos into mealtime. I catch up on Korean dramas I have not finished, favourite Bilibili creators, light-knowledge cultural programmes, documentaries, stand-up comedy and so on. But I do not watch short videos – they are not immersive enough. I usually watch through the whole meal, and if the video is good, I keep putting off getting up to wash the dishes. Sometimes I keep compressing my lunch break just to steal a few more minutes of pleasure.

@麻花: I love Western sitcoms, usually series I have already watched many times. I rarely start a new show during a meal, though I do watch long-running series like Law & Order. I will not watch anything at the table with obvious ideological bias that makes me feel offended – for instance, many early Western shows carry a clear colonialist or white-male-centred perspective. I gravitate more towards harmless, sweet little comfort shows. I almost never watch anything that demands serious thought while I eat. Eating is one of the few chances I get to just let my mind go blank.

Quenching Thirst by Gazing at Plums

For those who love mukbang and food-related videos, a “digital side dish” can also work as a substitute for the real thing.

@王定一: I usually watch anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, depending on a lot of things. My current digital side dish is Season 5 of Taohuawu; before that, I loved food variety shows such as Three Meals a Day, Wild Kitchen and Back to Field. My biggest requirement for a digital side dish is that it needs the immersive quality of a long-form video. The dopamine hit from the food plus the immersive companionship the video provides give me double the pleasure. Sensory-wise, my food does not taste better, but the overall experience across all five senses during the meal is richer.

@花果园子: Music, films, novels – whatever takes my fancy. When I am feeling low, I put on energetic, upbeat tracks; it is like being injected with chicken blood, and I come back to life. When I have no appetite, I look at beautifully shot food videos, and I manage a couple of extra mouthfuls.

@KL: I enjoy watching mukbang, roast-style comedy or reality TV – anything light-hearted and fun. Food videos work more as a case of quenching thirst by gazing at plums – essentially a digital cheat meal. While I watch, my brain and my mouth feel like they are in Cao Cao’s camp while the heart belongs to the Han, haha.

◉Food has become one of the most popular niche themes in variety programming. Pictured: a screenshot from the recently trending food variety show Yifan Fengshen. Source: Yifan Fengshen

Eating Becomes Mere Chewing

Yet other readers say that watching videos does not make their food taste better – it makes them overlook the flavour of the food itself. Eating becomes nothing more than chewing, and their meals turn insipid.

@Hina: I usually watch while waiting for my food to arrive; during the meal it depends, anywhere from a few minutes to tens of minutes. I rarely watch variety shows because they are too loud. Otherwise I follow a series or catch an interview-format programme, leaning towards a gentler, warmer tone. A video mostly provides a kind of surrogate companionship, though it does not actually make the food taste better; it distracts from the act of eating and is not really healthy.

@王定一: Sometimes a digital side dish can also make my own food taste dull.

@zoe: I watch quite a lot of sitcoms, such as The IT Crowd and Frasier. Mainly because the food I cook myself does not taste great, and I do not need to savour it. Eating while watching a show lets me divert my attention away from my own cooking – the plot is engaging, but it does not make the food taste any better.

@梦: Videos usually make us pay even less attention to the experience of taste; before you know it, the meal is over.

@王维: When I eat my lunch, I glance around and almost everyone is scrolling on their phone or watching short dramas. They look happy, as if this is their only moment of relaxation. I get the sense that the videos make them completely forget the taste of their food; eating has become nothing more than an automatic action. All that matters is chewing – it is disrespectful to the food.

@山山: Watching videos while eating gives me an immersive kind of joy and helps me let go of life’s pressures a little more. It does not make my food taste better, but I still rely on it heavily.

“I Feel Like I Might Be a Little Dead”

People often say a “digital side dish” can ease loneliness, yet it also carries the risk of scattering attention, eroding the desire to connect with others, and pulling people deeper into suppressed emotions and an oppressive sense of life.

@可可: Really, a digital side dish is not necessarily tied to loneliness or feeling low. Even when I am in great spirits, I still want to watch something. But if you rely on digital side dishes to get through every single meal, from dawn to dusk, for a whole week straight, things are bound to go wrong. I really would rather not recall that period. One year I spent the entire summer holiday alone at home, eating takeaway every day, watching all kinds of film and TV recaps – mainly Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Yongzheng Dynasty. Once I had watched them through, I would just lie there. The whole stretch could only be described as a time without light or sun. Every time I cleared away the takeaway bags and flopped onto the bed, in that moment I felt like I might be a little dead – I simply could not pull myself together.

◉Takeaway lets people eat without leaving home, but it also closes each person’s world further and further, until all that is left is piles of takeaway rubbish in the corridor. Source: Foodthink

@花果园子: When my phone runs out of battery or sauce splashes onto the screen, I stop watching. Or if I cannot find a good place to prop it up, I just give up. So sometimes when I play on my phone while eating, the energy is not exactly high. I have thought about shaking off the digital side dish – after all, it scatters my focus and leaves me unable to concentrate in everyday life. And watching so often, you tire of it; you become uninterested in everything, arriving at a point where there is no “fun” left to be had.

@梦: I seem unable to do both at once. Either I become so absorbed in the video that I forget to eat, or I look down to eat and miss the details on screen. Either way, I feel uneasy. I have noticed that my husband sometimes watches short videos during meals – mostly light topics, like sudden weather alerts or cat-and-dog clips. But if something is emotionally tense, information-dense, or a bit too long, he just swipes past it. I can feel that those short videos do not genuinely help him relax either; it is more like being anaesthetised, siphoned dry.

@山山: Being in a relationship once helped me break free of the digital side dish. My partner and I made a pact not to be one of those couples hunched over their meals, each staring at a phone – and we stuck to it. Eating out, we would talk; at home, we would share our favourite shows and watch them together. Later we broke up, and I went back to eating while watching a digital side dish – and if I could not find one, I would skip the meal and just keep searching.

Do You Want to Quit Your “Digital Side Dish”?

People’s attitudes towards the “digital side dish” are still deeply conflicted. So, after weighing the pros and cons, what choices do they make? And what attempts have they made to quit?

@Hina: For a while I was terribly addicted to my phone – I could not put it down even while eating. Then I read some psychology books: saying grace before meals, plating food carefully, observing each bite closely, chewing every mouthful with attention, holding reverence for the food… These small practices are really ways of reclaiming your attention from the phone’s virtual world back into the real one. If you keep at it, do it with intention, you can break free of the digital side dish – though from time to time I still feel the urge to pick up my phone mid-meal.

@灯下: I make myself stop eating whenever I pick up my phone to scroll. I put the phone down before I continue eating. That way I do not have to register the taste of the food or the tedium of eating alone. But sometimes this makes it hard to actually take in the video content, and the meal drags on longer, which gets frustrating.

◉Playing on your phone while eating has become the most unremarkable way for modern people to take their meals. Source: Foodthink

@王维: My suggestion is to start with awareness. Reclaiming a sense of sacredness around eating is one way; mindful eating is worth trying too. Also, watching videos may well be how many people relieve stress, so you can look for breakthroughs in stress management. And video platforms are inherently good at guiding and manipulating your attention – you need to step back and see that for what it is. Once you see through it, it can no longer bewitch you, and you are free.

@KL: I do want to shake off the digital side dish, because after finishing a meal I leave a table of wreckage untouched for ages, which directly wrecks my plans for the rest of the day and spirals into rushing and regret. When I am not busy, one meal with a video can stretch to over two hours, far beyond a normal eating time. I drag it out so long that I miss the food’s peak flavour window entirely – which is terrible. But I have not yet tried any concrete method.

@辞镜: I feel there is no need to quit. For someone eating alone, it is a perfectly good mood regulator – unless it genuinely starts affecting your health. The digital side dish is perhaps just a placebo for how you spend your time. Only something more important or more meaningful could replace it.

@王定一: I had not thought about it before, but I came to realise that the almost compulsive continuity of a digital side dish makes me reluctant to leave that “virtual” world after the meal, eating into time I should spend studying, doing chores, and so on. So I have started deliberately limiting my intake. I tried setting time limits for watching videos, but the instant dopamine hit from shows like Taohuawu is still hard to resist.

Sometimes the problem is not the “digital side dish” itself, but whether your life is rich enough. My most unforgettable experience was at Guantang New Village in Chengdu. I sat eating by the fields, peering through the gaps between the fine-leaf miscanthus at the mountains, forests and fields beyond. In that moment the phone was utterly useless – the experience the new setting offered was itself an exquisite “side dish”.

@Teresa: I have considered it – especially after realising I have developed the habit of watching or listening to videos no matter when I am eating. The content lingers in my head constantly; I cannot think for myself, cannot concentrate on recalling what I have just learned or read, or form my own views.

@糟糟: I am not sure, but I have genuinely stopped watching videos at mealtimes lately. Perhaps it has to do with feeling unwell recently and being diagnosed with a pulmonary nodule – my health awareness is sharper now. I feel that eating carefully is truly important for my body, even pleasant. When I feel unwell, I close my eyes and meditate, tuning into my body. I have also learned, by instinct and appetite, that some days I genuinely want more vegetables and less meat.

Rebuilding the Nearby Through Food

Many readers feel that if you are in a more positive social or emotional relationship, you naturally no longer need a “digital side dish” – eating becomes instead a medium for deepening bonds with family, partners and friends. In truth, the very existence of the “digital side dish” reveals that people still need to connect with others and the wider world through the act of eating. And that, in turn, prompts us to think about how, through food, we might rebuild the connections to the people in our immediate world.

@Hodel: When I eat with others, I do not look at my phone – especially when there are topics to discuss and things flow naturally between us. Returning to the meal itself is really an act of greater care for your own body, and also a moment to build a connection with another person. There are plenty of benefits, of course. When the digital side dish becomes the only companion you can have after work, choosing it is “a choiceless choice”.

@KL: At a gathering with friends, I simply have no time for my phone. Another scenario is when the place you are eating has lovely scenery – sitting alone, watching the view while you eat, feels perfectly at ease. Oh, and one more: when there is gossip nearby, whether about people or little animals, fresh things happening right in front of you are far more interesting than your phone.

@梦: I think, if you are eating alone, or with a friend, watching a slower-paced long video together is a lovely thing. But if my husband is eating with me and scrolling through short videos at the same time, I hold it in for a while and then express my unhappiness – because I feel ignored. I try to find something we can talk about, to compete with the phone’s pull through conversation. Sometimes I succeed – when I have a good story to tell; sometimes I fail – usually that day he is not in a good place.

@Hina: When I eat with my family, I never pick up my phone. There are not many hours I get to spend with my parents; meals are our time together.

◉A Bilibili creator who specially brings home-cooked food made by mothers to northern students working in the south moved many viewers to tears. Sometimes, we do not need to look outside ourselves for the meaning of a meal – the food itself already carries the most important emotions. Source: Bilibili @Beifan Nantiao

@王定一: When I am eating with others, I do not watch videos. In my hierarchy of dopamine hits, chatting over a meal with family, friends or clients – exchanging ideas, broadening perspectives, sharing stories – gives me far greater satisfaction. I feel the “digital side dish” is a kind of “side plate” for people living in the atomised society of the city; the moment I am back in my hometown, in the old rural world of familiar faces, I no longer need one. I think the digital side dish cuts both ways. If you could sort people by group, offer some identity marker, and build a niche community where they share their digital side dishes, discuss facts and exchange viewpoints – that would be a fascinating experiment. We use food to “rebuild the nearby”, keep each other company, and rally the whole crew around the dinner table.

@LTT: Just because there is someone sitting across the table, does that mean you stop watching? Sometimes the person across from you is worse company than a digital side dish. Growing up, I always saw these idyllic scenes in TV dramas – a whole family chattering happily around the dinner table. In our household it was the exact opposite: cooking could take two hours, eating took ten. My parents were silent, meals ended quickly, and everyone drifted off to do their own thing. So I always dreamed of what it would feel like to come home from a long day and share the day’s news with my family over dinner. Once I had a little home of my own, work brought nothing but resignation and pressure. Bringing it up at the table only deepened those memories and dragged my mind into a negative spiral.

@耶耶: When I am with my family, I eat with full attention. Eating alongside them makes me feel truly happy.

@山山: At work meals I put my phone away – forced by basic social etiquette, if nothing else. In truth, I dislike eating with most of my colleagues; every waking moment, I want to pull out my phone and escape the world. But when I sit down with someone truly close – someone who really sees me – I naturally do not reach for a video. My inner self feels nourished, so I can listen well and be listened to.

@楠崽: When eating with others in a social setting, there have been times when everyone simply stares at their own phones. It feels rather cold.

@Road: When I go out to eat with friends, I never look at my phone. With close friends there is always plenty of news, opinions and perspectives to share and absorb – that easily outweighs the pull of any digital side dish. With my partner, though, we often watch shows during meals. It is not because we are trying to economise on the emotional energy we spend on each other; quite the opposite – it tightens the threads of our conversation and stirs the relationship. The clearest sign is that our shared in-jokes multiply, the language we use in everyday talk grows richer, and we can convey far more nuanced things to each other. Lines from My Own Swordsman, for instance, crop up in our banter all the time.

Cooking as Self-Healing

In seeking the meaning of eating, we often forget the meaning of cooking. Cooking is, at its heart, an intimate conversation between you, your food and the natural world – and sometimes the happiness and contentment it brings is more than enough to heal the monotony and scarcity of daily life.

@sora: Loneliness is a symptom of modern life; the “digital side dish” is the antidote. But for me, sometimes it feels more like quenching my thirst with poisoned wine – I am never quite satisfied. Then I discovered that it is cooking for yourself that truly heals that sense of loneliness. The whole process – hands moving, eyes watching, nose breathing in, ears taking in sound – every sense is engaged, and it feels so grounded. And if you can then raise a glass with your family, drink freely and talk until you are all laughing, the fullness of that satisfaction is beyond anything scrolling through short videos could ever offer.

◉Home-cooked dishes sora excels at. Source: sora

@zoe: Actually, I quite enjoy chatting while I eat. If someone joins me for a meal I have cooked myself, I am sure to chatter and riff on everything as we go. When eating with others, I rarely touch my phone. I love talking as we eat, and I will likely offer my thoughts on the food as well.

@梦: When my husband needs a digital side dish, I guess it is because he feels the meal is exactly the same as always and does not hold enough charm. But when he pours himself fully into preparing a meal, he does not need a single video on the side – he eats with complete focus.

@小梅: I think back to my childhood. Mum would labour over a meal, and she loved watching me eat it with relish, but hated it when I watched TV half-heartedly. Now that I have started cooking myself, I want my family or friends to respond to the food I make – a comment, a sign that they are truly enjoying it – rather than just scrolling through short videos or chatting among themselves, which at times I simply cannot bear. Because this meal was not something a fingertip could summon from a takeaway app; every bit of effort and care I poured into it is woven into the plate. Whether I am eating alone or with others, I want us to linger briefly over the journey the food took – that leaves me feeling genuinely fulfilled.

Produced by: Kairui

Edited by: Yuyang