Humans are wired to connect. Since the beginning of recorded history, we have relied on social relationships to develop intimacy, achieve personal goals, and fill the gaps where we fall short as individuals. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone without at least one story of a relationship that changed their life.

But something has shifted. The number of close relationships people maintain has been declining for years, and in response, we have turned to the internet, specifically to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, to satisfy that need for connection.

These one-sided relationships have a name: parasocial relationships (PSRs).

The term was coined by researchers Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956 to describe the one-sided bonds audiences formed with television celebrities. Today, PSRs have moved far beyond the television set, and they are reshaping how millions of people think about friendship, mentorship, and self-improvement.

What Is a Parasocial Relationship?

A parasocial relationship is a one-sided emotional bond where one person invests time, attention, and emotional energy into a media figure who does not know they exist. In the 1950s, this might have meant tuning into your favorite TV show once a week. Today, it means following an influencer who posts multiple times a day across several platforms, available to watch whenever you want, as many times as you want.

The sheer volume of parasocial interaction (PSI) in modern life has grown dramatically over the last two decades. The question worth asking is whether any of it is actually good for us.

Parasocial Relationships as Mentorship: Does It Work?

One of the most significant shifts in modern parasocial dynamics is the rise of the influencer as life coach. Fitness creators, productivity gurus, mental health advocates, and self-improvement accounts have stepped into a role once reserved for people who actually knew you: your mentor, your coach, your trusted friend.

We have, in many ways, traded relationships with people who understand our individual circumstances for advice from strangers who have no idea who we are.

Most people would immediately reject unsolicited advice from a stranger on the street. But constant exposure to an influencer creates a powerful illusion of closeness. In our minds, these are not strangers. We see them more often than we see our closest friends and family. They speak directly to the camera, seemingly to us.

But does this translate into real behavior change?

The research is not encouraging. A study published in the Journal of Consumer and Retail Services found that “parasocial relationships developed with an influencer show insignificant effect on intentions to exercise.” A separate study found that non-exercising viewers were motivated to watch fitness content primarily for entertainment and the routine of seeing a familiar digital face, but that exposure did not meaningfully affect whether they actually exercised. According to social cognitive theory, this may be linked to social comparison and a perceived lack of ability to replicate what they are watching (Bandura, 2001).

Perhaps most striking is the concept of vicarious goal fulfillment: watching fitness videos can actually partly replace the act of exercising in our minds, providing a psychological sense of having done something without doing it at all (Tiggemann and Zaccardo, 2015). The cases where fitness content was genuinely useful were largely limited to people who were already exercising regularly.

The mentor-influencer relationship, it turns out, may be better at making us feel productive than at making us actually productive.

Parasocial Relationships as Friendship: The Hidden Agenda

PSRs can feel like real friendships, and that feeling is not accidental. It is a feature of how our brains process repeated social exposure. But these are not ordinary friendships. They are friendships with a commercial agenda.

The bulk of academic research on parasocial relationships unsurprisingly focuses not on wellbeing but on marketing, specifically on how influencer relationships drive purchasing behavior. The consistent finding: the more authentic an influencer appears, the more likely their followers are to buy what they are selling (Sokolova and Kefi, 2019; De Veirman et al., 2017). The primary function of the parasocial bond, from a business standpoint, is not to support you. It is to sell to you.

A couple of months ago a vacuum salesman came to my house, he stayed for two hours and did the whole “It slices, it dices!” – Vacuum edition. I had a blast! He cleaned our rug, told us we had hard water in our faucet, tried selling us a grounding mattress, and even told us he would soon be selling microgreens out of his basement… a uniquely American experience. It’s been two months since the vacuum extravaganza, I haven’t seen him since. When he left our house, he left our life, no DM’s, no pictures of him vacuuming yet another rug with his amazing Vacuum. In the old days, when a salesman walked into your house, there was no confusion about whether or not they were your friend or mentor. We are super comfortable putting up “no soliciting” signs on our front doors, so why not our phones?

Social media influencers occupy a far more ambiguous space. The line between friend and salesperson is deliberately blurred, and most of us have not developed the instincts to navigate that ambiguity clearly.

Why This Matters: The Loneliness Epidemic

None of this means you need to delete your social media accounts. Plenty of online content is genuinely useful. A YouTube tutorial that teaches you how to replace a car part, for example, is exactly what it claims to be: straightforward information, no relationship required.

The issue is about context, specifically, the context in which we seek social connection.

A 2020 Harvard survey found that 61% of adults aged 18 to 25 reported experiencing serious loneliness, compared to 39% across the general population. Loneliness is common, it is widespread, and for many people, scrolling through social media has become the default response to it.

But here is the thing: if you are sitting in a coffee shop feeling lonely, there is a strong chance the person next to you is feeling lonely too. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge what these relationships really are, and instead, take a chance on the stranger sitting next to you, rather than the vacuum salesman on your phone.

References

• Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory of mass communication. Media Psychology, 3(3), 265-299.
• De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., and Hudders, L. (2017). Marketing through Instagram influencers. International Journal of Advertising, 36(5), 798-828.
• Horton, D. and Wohl, R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction. Psychiatry, 19(3), 215-229.
• Sokolova, K. and Kefi, H. (2019). Instagram and YouTube bloggers promote it, why should I buy? Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
• Tiggemann, M. and Zaccardo, M. (2015). “Exercise to be fit, not skinny”: The effect of fitspiration imagery on women’s body image. Body Image, 15, 61-67.