“You Might Like Each Other”: Mass Customization and the Structuring of Sociality Among Chinese Generation Z on the Soul App
2026-07-19
We employed the framework of mass customization to investigate how the Soul app, a leading interest-based social platform, is reshaping sociality among Chinese Generation Z. Six months of participatory observation, from December 2024 to June 2025, in Soul’s interest-driven communities and semi-structured interviews with 11 users aged 21–29 served to explore how algorithmic mechanisms, personality tests and tag-based systems facilitate interest-driven connections. The findings reveal that Soul’s design fosters emotional support and fluid self-presentation through virtual identities yet simultaneously reinforces cultural and economic stratification by creating exclusive circles and algorithmic social cocoons. Members of Generation Z actively negotiate these constraints by deploying emotional strategies and identity adjustments to balance authenticity with platform logics. By examining algorithmic matching as an instance of mass customization in shaping sociality, this study advances the understanding of how digital natives in China navigate the tensions between personalization, scalability, and inequality in online interactions. The research contributes to platform studies by highlighting the dual role of algorithmic infrastructures as both enablers of individualized sociality and mediators of digital stratification in an individualized digital era.