A photo of Chinese singer Cyndi Wang posing sexily with a hamburger recently went viral on Weibo, with netizens commenting that the celebrity has "such elegance." The image inexplicably became so popular that millions upon millions of young Chinese started a new social media meme mimicking Wang.

The object of the meme, which requires WeChat users to attach their own Wang-inspired selfie as part of a chain, however, was less an example of going viral as it was spreading a virus. For instead of encouraging Chinese youth to become leaders and innovators, it was yet another instance of getting them to mindlessly follow the masses.

How ironic that in this age of information, when nearly every Chinese student from middle school on up has their own smartphone and 24/7 access to the Internet, instead of advancing their awareness and progressing their intellect, today's young generations are becoming dumbed down by their dependence on social media.

Last year around this same time, the biggest online fad was a drinking competition, in which young adults encouraged each other to post videos of themselves guzzling down 1,000-3,000 milliliters of wine. Needless to say, numerous people got alcohol poisoning, and yet nobody seemed to care since they received some short-lived popularity out of it.

There are currently over 668 million Internet users in China, which is nearly half of the entire population, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. The country has also gone completely mobile, with smartphone penetration in urban areas exceeding 90 percent.

Among these, there are currently 600 million WeChat users, China's most popular social networking app, which accounts for 70 percent of all net users. There are also 212 million regular users of Weibo, a declining yet still notable number.

And yet, for all the "likes" and shares and comments that result from the billions of posts made every day on Chinese social media, few have any worthwhile purpose or cause. Occasionally, a hashtag or meme related to some specific incident will go viral, such as the smog-mask selfies following the recent air pollution red alert in Beijing, or last year's charitable "smile challenge" to raise awareness of harelips. But mostly young Internet users in China prefer to keep their social media simple - and stupid.

As a student at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), I am at ground zero of such stupidity. Instead of a bustling campus of China's most brilliant minds and future leaders, our zombie-like student body more closely resembles a scene from The Walking Dead. Everyone around me is utterly entranced by their smartphones, but it's not Virgil or Ovid they are engrossed in but rather WeChat Moments and Qzone.

Earlier this year, the latest nationwide student fad was to write a fake distressing update on social media, such as "I'm pregnant!" or "I just drank detergent because I thought it was milk powder!" The purpose was to get one of your followers to fall for it and write a comment of concern i.e. "Are you okay?" If they did, they had to make a similar fake update on their own account and get someone to fall for it too. If they didn't, they'd be unfriended.

It's quite disgraceful that with all that is going on the world these days - landmark climate accords, terrorism, illegal ivory trade - Chinese students prefer to share celebrity selfies, photos of their lunch or their latest Taobao purchase. Rather than engaging each other in intellectual dialogue, our social media is an endless scroll of nonsensical commentary and cyber-marketing. The news always talks about the growing number of Chinese consumers, but really netizens are the ones being consumed.

The China bureau of the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a new campaign via social media a couple of weeks ago saying "We think it's time to talk about safe sex," using the hashtag #gotitcovered on Weibo. Due to the rapidly rising number of male Chinese students contracting HIV and abortions among female students, WHO is hoping to use social media to quell the spread of sexually transmitted diseases "by spreading information instead."

It remains to be seen if #gotitcovered goes viral, but so far I haven't seen a single one of my classmates sharing it. Instead, the only thing I read on my WeChat all weekend were hashtags for 12-12, China's latest national shopping day.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.