What Are Parasocial Relationships, And Are You in One?

Have you ever listened to your favorite podcast and felt like you were in the room, silently participating in the conversation? Or maybe you’ve watched so many episodes of The Office or It’s Always Sunny that you feel like you’re also a part of the gang? If you relate to this sentiment, you have been in a parasocial relationship.

In this post, we’ll go over what parasocial relationships are, how to tell if you’re in one, and some tips if you’re struggling with a parasocial relationship.

What are Parasocial Relationships?

A parasocial relationship is a one-sided relationship where one person creates an emotional attachment and invests their time and energy, while the other party doesn’t know of the other person’s existence. Usually, a parasocial relationship will be between a media figure and a fan.

Popular examples of parasocial relationships

Here are some popular examples of platforms and outlets for a parasocial relationship to develop that you might relate with.

• Podcasters. If you listen to enough of your favorite podcaster, you’ll start to expect their jokes and understand their conversational quirks. You may even bond with other parasocial folks in the Youtube comment section.
• TikTok and Instagram influencers. Social media has such a bend toward authentic expression that when your favorite influencer speaks directly to the camera, it can feel like they are sending you a video message.
• Twitch streamers. If you continually watch a charismatic gamer talk stream-of-consciousness while playing your favorite games, it can feel like you’re hanging out in the same living room together.
• Professional athletes. When you track an athlete’s career and know their best and worst moments, it can feel like you really know them.
• Fictional TV show characters. Shows can be so comforting that if you continually hang out with the same fictional gang, they can start to feel real to you^{1https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0030938}.
• News anchors. If you watch journalists report on the news, you’ll get familiar with their opinions and idiosyncracies, and you can build a parasocial relationship with them.
• Musicians and actors. When you follow someone’s creative journey, keep up with their latest releases, and track their ups and downs, it can feel like you know each other.
• ASMR artists. Many ASMR videos involve roleplays where the YouTuber talks directly to the camera and pretends to be your romantic partner, barber, or even school nurse. When users engage in these roleplays, they form an intimate-feeling bond with the creator and can even feel special.
• Brands. Parasocial relationships can go beyond just people—we can also form parasocial relationships with brands^{2https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1094996813000650} where we feel loyalty to a brand and a willingness to reveal our information to them. This is especially true if we’ve been buying their product/service for a long time and resonate with their values and aesthetic. Any iPhone or MacBook owner has a relationship with Apple; the more extreme fans have been called “iSheep^{3https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/09/15/the-psychology-behind-apples-obsessive-isheep-fans/}.”

The Parasocial Spectrum

Parasocial researcher Bradley Bond^{4https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/above-noise/episodes/psychology-parasocial-relationships-ag5klp} suggests that parasocial relationships are on a spectrum.

On one end, you have fans. If someone were a fan of Billie Eilish, for example, they might enjoy her music and feel excited when she releases a new album.

On the other end of the spectrum is celebrity worship^{5https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3960781/}, which involves complete absorption and even addiction to the celebrity. In these cases, they’d treat Billie Eilish like an idol. They might over-empathize with her ups and downs, become obsessive over every detail in her personal life, and even view Billie Eilish as a soulmate. The most extreme cases are stalking.

Source

Scientists also use more jargony terms^{6http://casper.com/blog/best-nap-length/} for this spectrum. They call the far-left “entertainment-social,” the middle “intense-personal,” and the far right “borderline pathological.”

If you find yourself too far to the right of this spectrum, you may start to engage in unhealthy behavior, where you either become obsessive, and delusional in your relationship with the celebrity or overweigh the celebrity’s importance in your life. 

Later in this post, we’ll help you determine if your parasocial relationship is healthy and give tips for finding balance.

History of parasocial relationships

Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl invented the term “parasocial” 1956 in a research article^{7https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049} published in the Psychiatry journal titled “Mass Communication and Parasocial Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance.”  

Horton and Wohl observed that with the popularization of TV, fans started to develop relationships with stars that were “one-sided, nondialectical, controlled by the performer, and not susceptible of mutual development.”

It used to be that parasocial connections could only form while someone was in front of the TV at the scheduled time of their TV program. Now, you can Google your favorite influencer at any second of the day, and most people provide an endless supply of content through social media and interviews.

Why Do We Form Parasocial Relationships?

The human brain is adaptable and can’t always distinguish between what is happening in reality and what technology is simulating.

For example, a few years ago, I tried a virtual reality game where I rode an elevator up a few hundred floors and got out on top of a skyscraper. There was a plank extending off the roof of a building for me to walk on. 

My body was hot with sweat, my face flushed, and I felt dizzy and disoriented. I have a fear of heights, and my body would not let me step foot on that plank. Rationally, I knew I was safe, I was in a ground-level studio in Brooklyn, but my brain was firing signals like I was on top of a building about to die. 

Check out some professional European football players who try the same challenge here.

Fan Behavior and Lifespan Development Theory: Explaining Para-social and Social Attachment to Celebrities | SpringerLink

Our brains can interpret things as real that isn’t actually real.

The same process at work has you feel emotionally impacted by Pixar’s non-human, animated characters, like Wall-E. Wall-E is not a human experiencing emotions, but we perceive it that way.

We can also empathize with VR avatars^{8https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2020.506984/full} and see pet rocks^{9https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kiesler/anthropomorphism-org/pdf/ACR04PetRock.pdf} as extensions of ourselves.

We have a brain that evolved to help us build tribes and avoid death-by-sabretooth^{10https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-top-ten-deadliest-animals-of-our-evolutionary-past-18257965/}. This brain evolved to need social connection. 

So when you watch Shawshank Redemption, you are technically just watching a bunch of humans on a screen—but to your brain, those humans are real, and you will reach to form connections with them. 

In this sense, it seems unavoidable that we will form social and emotional connections with celebrities whose lives we get to witness.

If you’d like to learn to connect more effectively in two-way relationships, this book might be a helpful resource.

6 Types of Parasocial Relational Dynamics

Parasocial relationships can take many forms. Here are a few relational dynamics you might find yourself in if you engage in parasocial connections:

Parasocial friend

This is one of the most common parasocial relationships. For example, The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast out there, and the format is that Rogan hangs out with someone, and they talk casually for 3 hours.

In this podcast, you are either watching Rogan hang out with his friends or make a new friend, so it can become automatic to view him as a friend.

Parasocial crush or romance

Viewing a celebrity or influencer as your parasocial romantic partner is especially pertinent in teenagers, with over 60% of adolescents^{11https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00255/full} viewing their favorite media figure as a relationship partner. 

It’s common enough for Keanu Reeves (as well as others) to have earned the title “the Internet’s boyfriend^{12https://time.com/5603032/keanu-reeves-best-moments/}.”

Parasocial coach

Life can sometimes feel difficult, and we all benefit from encouragement and support from loved ones. Sometimes we just need to hear someone say, “Everything is going to be okay,” or “You got this!” 

Whether you’re drawn to Mel Robbins or Tony Robbins, if you get enough support from an online figure, you can form a bond with them and might turn to them in challenging times.

Parasocial parental figure

Plenty of older figures on the internet can feel like a parental presence to viewers, especially when the media figure leans towards personal growth.

Parasocial teacher

Lots of times, we go onto the internet to learn things. When we have one person we learn from a lot, they can feel like a parasocial teacher. This could be a science teacher like Andrew Huberman, a makeup teacher like Alexandra Anele, or anything in between. 

Parasocial role model

It’s no secret that we idolize celebrities. The TV show American Idol has overtly been trying to turn singers into idols for 20 years!

If you follow influencers or celebrities who are experts in your craft, it’s natural to view them as role models or even idols.

7 Tips for People Struggling in a Parasocial Relationship

If you do feel like you’re engaging in a parasocial relationship that is harming you in some way, but hasn’t quite reached obsession status, then you can try out some of the tips below.

Reflect on the relationship

It might be a good start to think about how your parasocial relationship is impacting you. The more insight you can get about your own parasocial relationships, the better.

You can start with these questions. With each reflection, use the starter questions and let yourself free associate to see what else emerges.

Reflection questions: 

1. Emotional reflections. What are the most salient emotions I feel when I think of this person? Are they mostly positive, negative, or mixed? How are these emotions impacting my overall wellbeing?
2. Self-esteem reflections. How does this parasocial relationship impact my self-esteem? Do they make me feel more or less confident in myself? Do I feel a healthy sense of self outside or the parasocial connection?
3. Dependence reflections. How big of a role does this person play in my life? Do I find it hard to stop intaking their content? If I could no longer view their content, do I think I’d be okay?
4. Real-life relationship reflections. How does my parasocial connection impact my real-life connections? Do I often compare my real-life relationships with my parasocial ones? Am I using my parasocial connections to replace my real-life ones?

Take some time off

If your parasocial relationship is starting to feel addictive, you can try to go a day (or even a week) without them and notice what comes up for you. Sometimes with sticky habits, it can be helpful to take a reset week.

Action step: Put a day in your calendar where you don’t engage with your parasocial relationship at all—none of their art, content, interviews, or twitter posts. If a day feels too easy, you can try a week.

Meditate on the one-sided truth

Parasocial relationships are, by definition, one-sided. Your celebrity friend doesn’t know who you are. Reflecting on this truth can help break some of the spells that the parasocial relationship is mutual.

Here is one Twitch creator, Ludwig, giving a harsh dose of truth to some of his parasocial fans.

1:27-2:03 

Action step: Slowly say each of the following phrases out loud and notice how each one feels in your body. When you say each phrase, replace the name “Ludwig” with whoever your parasocial person is.

“Ludwig does not know me.”

“Ludwig will never know who I am.”

“Ludwig cannot care about me as an individual because he does not know me.”

“Ludwig and I are not friends.”

“I will never be anything other than a fan of Ludwig.”

Bring in social support

Is your parasocial relationship an attempt at replacing real-person intimacy? If so, call in your social support.

Action step: Text a friend or family member to make plans THIS week.

If you’re feeling low on stock in the friend department, try some of these tips for making new friends.

Think about your ideal self

For many, their parasocial connections represent the ideal version^{13https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2008/09/9626.html} of their own self. Folks with high self-esteem already feel closer to their ideal self, whereas folks with lower self-esteem tend to feel further from their ideal self.

Ask yourself this: In what ways does your parasocial figure represent your ideal self? In what ways are you already living out the qualities of your ideal self?

Face the fire

Are you using your parasocial relationship as an escape from your real-life relationships? Remember, we learned earlier that many people tend to use parasocial connections when their two-way relationships are insecure and unstable. 

Action steps:

1. Reflect: Which relationship(s) in your life feel unhealthy and could use some attention?
2. Brainstorm: What are 5 things you could do or say to bring more health to that connection? Here are a few ideas:
   • State a boundary
   • Share more appreciation
   • Talk about your love languages
   • Invest more time and commitment
   • Vulnerably share that you’re feeling distant
3. Take action: Pick the most resonant idea and plan to execute it this week.

Use your parasocial relationship as a mirror

Remember, how we show up in our parasocial relationships can reflect how we show up in our two-way relationships.

Action steps: Pick a trusted friend and ask them the following two questions: 

1. “Based on how you’ve seen me relate to Justin Bieber (or whomever), in what ways does it seem like my parasocial relationship is unhealthy?”
2. “Do you see me bringing any of those patterns into our friendship?”

How Do Parasocial Relationships Resemble Real-Life Relationships?

Forming a parasocial relationship

Parasocial relationships develop in stages^{14https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314196119_Relationships_between_Human_Beings_and_Objects_An_Extension_of_Parasocial_Interaction#:~:text=Findings%20of%20the%20analysis%20include,parasocial%20interaction%20evolves%20in%20phases.}, much like two-way relationships.

First, you meet the other person. Parasocially, that might mean your friend introduces you to a new YouTube channel or you find a new musical artist on Spotify.

For parasocial relationships to evolve, you require repeated exposure^{14https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314196119_Relationships_between_Human_Beings_and_Objects_An_Extension_of_Parasocial_Interaction#:~:text=Findings%20of%20the%20analysis%20include,parasocial%20interaction%20evolves%20in%20phases.} to the media personality. When you watch enough of their videos, you’ll build familiarity and comfort. It’s the same property at play if you visit the same city park over and over again; you start to develop an affinity and connection with the park.

But parasocial relationships differ from parks because you experience some illusion of intimacy with the media figure. 

What does intimacy look like in parasocial relationships?

Once you watch enough of their Youtube videos, you start to feel connected with the creator, and eventually, your feelings of intimacy will deepen. The feeling of intimacy in a parasocial connection can take several forms:

• You witness their life journey. One fundamental part of a two-way intimate relationship is that you grow with another person and see how they change and develop over time. Similarly, if you follow a musician for several years, you’ll see their creative evolution, which simulates that feeling of long-term intimacy.
• You experience their vulnerability. Another key to intimacy in a two-way relationship is the expression of vulnerability. The strength of a connection is determined mainly by how vulnerable the two people can be to each other. 

The way people post on social media, it can feel like you are singularly holding space for an influencer’s vulnerability. Here’s one example of a TikToker baring her soul in a relatable way.

• You “get” their sense of humor. For many of us, feeling comfortable acting goofy in a relationship can take a while. Sometimes only our oldest friends know just how silly and funny we can be. But since we get to experience our icons being goofy online all the time, it can make us feel like we know them deeply.
• Sometimes, they talk to you. Here’s a video of my favorite musician expressing gratitude to his fans. Even though 100,000 people viewed the video, when I watch it, it strangely feels like he’s expressing gratitude to me. 
• This type of expression from media creators further bolsters the illusion of two-way intimacy and promotes a parasocial connection.

Parasocial attachments

Attachment theory is a psychological lens that can help us understand our relationships.

Based on how our parents or caretakers treated us growing up, we developed a baseline of how secure we feel in our social attachments and strategies we subconsciously employ to gain security. 

Attachment styles typically refer to the patterns that arise in our deep connections with partners, but we can also form attachments with close friends, collaborators, and others.

The four attachment types are:

• Anxious attachment. People with this attachment style always want more closeness and constantly feel worried that their partner is pulling away. They can become possessive and clingy.
• Avoidant attachment. Avoidant partners can get overwhelmed by closeness and often pull away and ask for more space. These partners can struggle to show vulnerability and tend to avoid asking for help and support when they need it.
• Fearful attachment. This attachment style, also called “disorganized” attachment, is when someone toggles back and forth between anxious and avoidant. They might push their partner away and then feel anxiety at the distance.
• Secure attachment. Securely attached folks feel safe in their connection. They enjoy the closeness and also value healthy space. While some people always have a secure attachment style, others can also “earn” this style with enough healing and self-inquiry.

Researchers found that anxious-attached folks^{15https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407599164005} are most likely to form parasocial relationships and also form deeper parasocial relationships^{16https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8419286/}. 

Researchers also found that the nature of a person’s parasocial relationship mimics their real-life attachment relationships^{17https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407504041374?journalCode=spra}, so people who are anxiously attached tend to believe and fear that their favorite TV character might get killed off at any time (just as they might believe their partner might leave them at any time).

This is significant because it indicates that the healthiness of our parasocial relationships is a reflection of the healthiness of our real-person relationships.

Parasocial breakups

All relationships, including parasocial ones, will eventually come to an end. Whether a celebrity chooses to step out of the limelight or a TV series concludes, the parasocial relationship can only develop when the media personality continues to produce.

When the TV show Friends aired its final episode in 2004, the greatest predictor^{18https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15506878jobem5003_9} for viewers’ feelings of “breakup distress” was the intensity of the parasocial relationship with their favorite character.

Another study found that teens are more distressed^{19https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327825MCS0602_5} at parasocial breakups than adults.

When parasocial relationships end, the viewers experience a type of relationship grief.

But just like some romantic partners break up and rekindle years later, this can also happen parasocially.

For example, the band New Kids On The Block produced popular hits in the 1980s and 90s but broke up in 1994. Fourteen years later, the group came back together in 2008. Researchers surveyed fans’ reactions^{20https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1027/1864-1105.21.4.171} and found that fans displayed the use of relationship maintenance strategies^{21https://wggc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Relationship%20Maintenance%20Strategies.pdf} in their parasocial getting-back-together with the band. 

“Relationship maintenance strategies” is a term in psychology that refers to five types of healthy behaviors that people engage in to keep a relationship thriving (positivity, openness, assurances, social networks, and sharing tasks). 

All of this research indicates that parasocial relationships, while one-sided, are relationships. And that fans engaging parasocially bring with them their relationship skills and patterns and that they feel real emotions at the development of the parasocial relationship.

How Parasocial Relationships Have Developed Recently

While humans have always had the capacity for parasocial connections (remember the pet-rock example from above), as society develops and technology evolves, conditions for parasocial relationships are becoming more and more prime.

Social media and parasocial relationships

Parasocial researcher Bradley Bond^{22https://www.sandiego.edu/news/detail.php?_focus=82780https:/www.sandiego.edu/news/detail.php?_focus=82780} suggests that the increase in our screen time over the past few years has increased the likelihood that we will form parasocial relationships.

The idea is that when more interactions with our real-life friends take place over screens—Marco Polo, Facetime, Snapchat, and the like—the less we can distinguish between our real friends and our parasocial friends. It’s one face on a screen versus another. 

The difference between my college friend talking to me through a screen and Jennifer Lawrence talking to me through a screen is thinner than when my friend and I are walking together in a park, chatting and experiencing each others’ body language.

Social media has also given us 24/7 access to people. Some celebrities post frequently, so we can stay up to date with their lives. And even if they don’t post frequently, we can scroll through their old posts. So in the pre-internet days, parasocial relationships only used to develop when your favorite show was on. But now, they are growing all the time.

Social media has one other unique feature in that it appears to lift the veil behind a celebrity’s stardom. Social media can give the illusion that we know what that person is really like. But at the end of the day, in parasocial relationships, you can never get all the way behind their media personas.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Parasocial Relationships

Benefits of parasocial relationships

Most parasocial relationships are healthy and aren’t correlated^{23https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1985.tb00071.x} to the user feeling lonely. In fact, they can come with great benefits.

• Belonging. When we connect deeply with a media figure, we can feel like we relate to them. Especially if we connect with a community of other parasocial folks, we can feel a sense of belonging.
• Help with loneliness. While parasocial relationships aren’t a replacement for two-way relationships, they can provide some aid if you are going through a difficult and lonely time.
• Impact. Just as our friends greatly impact^{24https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4221254/} our values, beliefs, self-image, habits, and health, so too do our parasocial relationships. The more you let the celebrity in, the more they’ll impact you. 
• This is to say that you’ll experience a more significant impact from the Dalai Lama if you have a parasocial connection with him rather than if you just listen to him speak as a distant fan. So the good news here is that you can pick parasocial relationships that impact you positively.
• Reducing prejudice. This study^{25https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093650219900632} found parasocial relationships with fictional characters could aid heterosexual people in reducing their homophobic prejudices. This means parasocial connections can be a powerful change agent to create a society with less prejudice and discrimination.
• Bring out your best self. Research^{13https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2008/09/9626.html} suggests that when folks with low self-esteem write about the qualities of their parasocial role model, they will experience a boost in self-esteem and feel closer to their ideal self.

Drawbacks of parasocial relationships

For some folks, there can be negative consequences of parasocial relationships. The most common drawbacks are:

• Negative impact. Your parasocial connections will impact your political views, voting decisions, purchasing behavior, and trust in science. If you “let in” a parasocial relationship that is toxic in any way, that can deeply rub off on you.
• A retreat from two-way connections. One can easily start to replace their real-life connections with parasocial connections. In fact, those with insecure or unstable^{26https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=intlbus_facpub} real-life relationships tend to seek out parasocial relationships. As enjoyable as they are, parasocial relationships can’t give you the real human connection you crave. 

However, the main red flag to look out for is if your parasocial relationship goes too far.

Signs a parasocial relationship may be unhealthy

There’s no harm in being a fan or feeling connected to a celebrity. But a parasocial relationship might breach into the realm of “celebrity worship^{27https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242475256_Praying_at_the_altar_of_the_stars}” when your sense of reality and self start to warp. 

This means you start to believe your celebrity crush has feelings for you, or you allow them to impact you too deeply, or you become unhealthily obsessive. 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself, adapted from psychologists’ Celebrity Attitude Scale^{5https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3960781/}:

Questions about your sense of reality

• Do you believe the celebrity is your soulmate?
• Do you believe the celebrity is perfect in every way?
• Do you feel destined to be with this person at the exclusion of everyone else?
• Do you believe that if you walked into the home of your favorite celebrity that they’d be happy to see you?

Questions about you deifying the celebrity at your own expense

• Would you gladly die to save the life of your favorite celebrity?
• If you were lucky enough to meet your favorite celebrity, and they asked you to do something illegal as a favor, would you do it?
• Are your parasocial relationships negatively impacting your real-life relationships?

Questions about your obsessiveness with the celebrity

• If someone gave you several thousand dollars to do with as you please, would you consider spending it on a personal possession (like a napkin or paper plate) once used by your favorite celebrity?
• Do you have intense feelings about your favorite celebrity even if you don’t want to?
• Do you actively try to contact your favorite celebrity via email or letters?
• Have you tried or felt tempted to stalk your favorite celebrity?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it might be worth considering if your parasocial relationship is negatively impacting you or perhaps a symptom of a deeper challenge. 

If you would like to call in further support, here is one great resource for finding a mental health professional.

Here is an example of a fan experiencing intense emotion when they see Jack Harlow. Diagnosing someone from afar is impossible, but this heightened emotional reaction could indicate that the parasocial relationship is becoming too intense.

Frequently Asked Questions About Parasocial Relationships

Finding A Healthy Balance With Parasocial Relationships

Parasocial relationships are common and generally a positive force in people’s lives. They can be exciting and inspiring. But if it feels like your parasocial connections are serving as a replacement for real-life intimacy or are starting to become too intense, consider some of the following tips:

• Reflect on the relationship. How is it serving you? How is it harming you?
• Take a week off from engaging with your parasocial partner.
• Meditate on the truth that this relationship is one-sided.
• If your social needs feel unmet, invite a friend to hang out this week!
• Think about your ideal self and how you are already on the path to actualizing them.
• If you’re using your parasocial relationships as an escape, figure out which relationships in your life feel unhealthy and instigate a conversation to bring health into the relationship.
• Ask a trusted friend how your parasocial relationships might be unhealthy and if you also bring those patterns into your friendship.

Hopefully, you feel inspired to find more value from connecting with celebrities and influencers while also keeping your eye on any red flags.

If you’d like to continue reflecting on how you show up in relationships, you might enjoy this article.