The japanese article has a definition of how they labelled people. https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASM3R4DZQM3RULZU005.html https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASM3R

The japanese article has a definition of how they labelled people. https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASM3R4DZQM3RULZU005.html https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASM3R4DZQM3RULZU005.html It’s still pretty vague, my rough translation: “people who didn’t participate in social activities, like school or work for more than 6 months”. Also it’s stressed that this time they didn’t automatically remove at home spouses, and they were flagged as hikikomori if they had almost no interaction outside of their family. I wouldn’t surprised if blogging or content creating on the net would be excluded from “social participation” or not seen as communication in general.