Microdramas are booming. AI could make it even harder to stop binge-watching

Jade Gao/Getty Images They’re dubbed duanju , or microdramas – and they’ve become big business.

In China, the smartphone-friendly shows reportedly generated US$7 billion in 2024 , overtaking the country’s domestic box office for the first time.

Their audience numbers in the hundreds of millions, while the format is also growing rapidly in other markets, including the US .

Here’s how they work.

Episodes typically last about a minute and play vertically on a smartphone, while a season can stretch across dozens of instalments.

Many compress the heightened plots of soap operas – romance, betrayal, revenge and improbable wealth – into bursts of drama where something is almost always about to happen.

Early episodes are often free, with cliffhangers used to keep viewers watching before they’re eventually asked to pay to see what comes next.

Generative artificial intelligence is now accelerating their production, with Chinese platforms reportedly releasing hundreds of AI-made microdramas each day .

So, what is it that makes this form of entertainment so enticing? In my recent research , I modelled how viewers, algorithms, creators and platforms interact – and how that system can make it increasingly difficult for people to disengage.

What keeps us from tuning out We might not think much about why we stop watching or reading something, but traditional media give us plenty of opportunities to do so.

Some come naturally from us.

Repeated experiences tend to lose their effect as novelty wears off – a process psychologists call hedonic adaptation .

Others are built into the medium itself.

A television programme ends, a book chapter finishes or a newspaper runs out of pages.