There's no shortage of ways to connect with people these days — so why are we facing a loneliness epidemic? — via healthing_ca fandom mentalhealth lonely parasocial Swifties Beyhive healthing healthnews jonesyjourn
Intense fandoms and the power they wield is nothing new but in a technologically advanced era, these experiences are starting to feel more common. Online, chat boards like Reddit and Discord include threads devoted to dissecting the lives of even minor celebrities, and PR firms extol the power ofAlexandra Gold, PhD, a clinical fellow in psychology at Harvard Medical School and, says being a fan of a celebrity or a sports team is generally a positive thing.
Ironically, while we spend so much of our time warning teens about strangers on the internet, parasocial relationships — caring about or relating to a person who may not even know we exist — can be a useful tool. One-sided relationships create a somewhat safe space to try out relating to other people, offering the opportunity to pay attention to and understand our own feelings toward another person’s behaviour without the risk of that scrutiny being returned.
“[For] a preteen or even a teenager who is feeling very awkward, who’s feeling very confused about identity, who’s feeling very self-conscious in real face-to-face relationships, a parasocial relationship can be a sort of halfway house,” says Tafarodi. “ … it can be a sort of safe haven to start exploring one’s own emotional reactions to others.”
Celebrities and other public figures can also be used as a tool to figure out relationships to basic values, explains Gold. Paying attention to what a celebrity claims to care about, how they act in line with these values, and society’s response to these behaviours can be a low-risk way to try on an identity to see how it fits.
These perfectly normal stages of growth — and, let’s face it, we continue to use public figures in this way even into adulthood — hinge on the idea that they help inform our behaviour in real, reciprocal relationships with a back-and-forth of feedback and accountability. But allowing this one-sidedness to trickle into our “normal” relationships is when things become concerning.
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