By: Lillian Sage

Late at night, a girl sits in her room alone on her phone. She has fallen victim to everyone’s favorite act of doomscrolling. Opening up Instagram, she sees multiple posts with different captions and comments. Moving over to the discover page, she types in her best friend’s username in the search bar. 

Tucked in bed, lights turned off, her finger taps the screen twice to indicate liking their newest post. She is one of the first to like and comment on every one of their newest posts. Her job as this person’s best friend is to protect them. However, her “best friend” might need protection from her. 

While she might like and comment on every one of their posts, so do thousands, if not millions, of other people. The “best friend” is actually a celebrity. The fan only knows the persona this person decides to share with the public, but feels as if she knows them personally. This is a parasocial relationship. 

Kali Melton, an avid social media user, said it is possible that she herself has been in a parasocial relationship before. She believes these relationships stem from people wanting something they will never have otherwise.  

“I feel like people are feeling more attached to people they’ll never speak to,” Melton said, “instead of people that they can speak to and hang out with. I think it’s easier to obsess with someone that won’t hurt your feelings, rather than someone who might turn their back on you.”

These relationships can be done with the right intentions and wrong actions or even vice versa. Carol Jarzyna wrote in an article “research has shown that this type of PSI [parasocial interaction] gives us a feeling of belonging, helps us feel closer to our ideal selves, and raises our self-esteem.”

These relationships lead to the question of how people can find community when the culture is extremely digital. Are parasocial relationships a good sign because they give us this feeling of belonging and show an attempt at forming connections? Or are they dangerous because they are not consensual from all sides? 

Reilly Kincaid, a sociology professor at the University of Arkansas, believes there to be middle ground between these two questions. 

“If I listen to a podcast regularly,” Kincaid said, “I’m going to start feeling like I actually really know this person’s life in a way that they’re never going to know mine. I don’t think that that’s a bad thing, as long as they don’t replace more equitable, healthy, mutual relationships.” 

Kincaid said relationships that do not have equivalent effort from all sides can be unhealthy whether they are parasocial or not. So, people should be cautious when it comes to these types of relationships. 

Meanwhile, U of A psychology professor Dene Wamsley discussed more of the reasoning behind why some people might find themselves in a parasocial relationship.

“We’re consuming content that’s made on these individual pages,” Wamsley said, “like YouTubers or Tiktokers, and I think there’s a reason why we gravitate towards that. You’ll also see this in the influencing realm, that the more relatable influencers that seem to be kind of down to earth tend to be liked more than those who seem above it, or they’re not relatable, or they make a lot of money, or they seem like they’re better than other people. I think a lot of us are clamoring for that relatability, maybe because we’re missing some of it in our everyday lives.”

Michaela Taylor stated in a book that “the initial intent of social media was to make communication and connection accessible from a distance and has developed into a technology that serves endless other purposes.” Other purposes of social media can consist of advertising, entertainment, and even news sources

According to the Pew Research Center, out of all the younger generations of people who have found friends online, 64% of them met through social media, meaning that social media has been a solid way to form connections. However, Kincaid believes users of social media need to be more intentional if they are searching for community on these sites. 

“I think that today there are a lot more ads that we have to sort through,” Kincaid said, “a lot more distractions competing for our attention. Just in terms of how the algorithms have changed social media, like on Instagram, a lot of what people are seeing in their feeds is no longer just things from their friends and family. It’s from influencers and things like that, which has its own benefits, but I do think that that kind of competes with the idea of using social media for social connection.” 

Wamsley shared similar thoughts about the use of social media to build community as Kincaid. They both emphasized the importance of media literacy. Media literacy is the ability to sort through these ads and distractions that Kincaid talked about. As well as, being able to comprehend the effects that media can have on a person. 

“I think that having a monitor for yourself on ‘how does this picture make me feel,’” Wamsley said, “‘if I’m engaging in this kind of comment section, how does this make me feel’ can be really important. It’s okay to disengage, it’s okay to unfollow or shift your feed, but you should also be mindful of not surrounding yourself in an echo chamber as well because that’s kind of the opposite side.” 

Megan Brown defined echo chambers in an article as a “distribution of videos recommended to a user that is both ideologically homogeneous and centered on the user’s own ideology.” So, they do not allow the user to see any content that is different from what they believe.

Wamsley said it is important not to be surrounded by content that might be harmful. This content can include being stuck in an echo chamber or focusing on advertisements that might hurt people’s self esteem. 

Kincaid discussed some of Cory Doctorow’s ideas of “enshittification.” The thought process behind Doctorow’s work is that the quality of platforms like social media get worse and worse. 

These platforms are originally created to look and sound promising, which gets people to join or sign up. However, when these platforms become popular, there is a twist.  

“They [the people behind the platforms] can start decreasing the quality of the platforms to monetize them, ” Kincaid said. “They know that we’re already hooked. We came there to connect and to be able to see pictures and videos and ideas from friends and family”

When there is a large group of people on the site, that is when they know to start increasing shareholder value. Kincaid said the ads and distractions that can be found within the social media world are a part of this “enshittification.” This is why having media literacy can help when searching for connections. 

Kincaid is not completely against using social media as a way to find community, just cautious. 

“I certainly don’t want to raise any sort of moral panic about finding connection on social media,” Kincaid said. “I think that finding connection anywhere is good. So, if that’s social media, if that’s where you find social connection, then that’s great. I just think that research does show that we’re more lonely and more isolated. I don’t think that the phones are the sole reason, or that the social media is the sole reason. I do think that for a lot of folks, it’s not giving them the quality of social engagement that they seek or that they would get from in-person engagement, but I think it’s a valuable tool.” 

Wamsley emphasized that social media should only be used as a tool. 

“Unfortunately,” Wamsley said, “for a lot of people, social media is the majority of our lives these days, and having healthy boundaries on how you use that, but also exploring real world stuff more often, is always beneficial. And again, I’m not saying that I don’t do this too. I’ve had to remind myself to get into reading some more, go to the gym, work out, go hiking, hang out with my cats, because off-screen stuff really can help to re-center us.”

To go along with these examples that Wamsley mentioned, Kincaid named off a few ways for people to reach the quality of social engagement that they might be looking for. 

Many are relatively easy like talking to neighbors or people at the grocery store. If people are feeling like they need more, there are always opportunities to join clubs, sports teams and places of worship. 

Some of Kincaid’s research revolves around people’s social roles. These social roles can consist of many of the examples above such as being a baseball player or being a church attendee. 

Kincaid said people who have more social roles tend to have better mental health. While social roles do not completely correlate with digital media, there can still be effects. 

“Social media becomes problematic to the extent that these online engagements take away time and energy from the things that we would otherwise be doing in our community that can add social roles into our life,” Kincaid said. 

So, when people are focused on social media, they are less devoted to having social roles in the real world which in turn can lead to mental health conditions. 

In order to stray away from this, Kincaid gave her advice for people who might need help finding community in a digital age. 

“I think being intentional about who we follow and how frequently we are finding ourselves on our phones,” Kincaid said, “and also starting to kind of be mindful about how we feel after. I think that the more attention that we can bring to our social media habits, the more that we can begin to curate a space that feeds us, rather than using it in ways where it’s extracting things from us and we’re not gaining anything in return.” 

Wamsley explained that she believes people are starting to lose “third spaces.” These are places where they can go without necessarily having a reason to just get out and be social. Places like the mall or a park can be good examples of third spaces. There does not need to be an event or money spent at these places, just an excuse to get out. 

“Now that the internet is as big as it is, we don’t spend time in third spaces as much,” Wamsley said, “I think on a college campus, the fact that we have Hogsync and actual affiliated groups and organizations might be beneficial. I think if somebody is really seeking out community that they can try to look into what’s already been constructed on campus, and just trying to look into hobby-based or interest-based gatherings.” 

Melton also discussed the importance of finding these more specific groups. She gave examples of searching for people interested in yoga, crystals, jewelry and knitting. She also mentioned how people who are familiar with each other online could come together in person at a coffee shop to study together. 

Wamsley said there can be many reasonings as to why some people would rather communicate online than in person. These people might be neurodivergent or autistic, or even just scared of rejection or introverted. A big part of in-person communication is being brave, according to Wamsley.

“I think people shouldn’t be so scared about getting their feelings hurt,” Melton said, “I think it should be something that we get used to and accept, because we can’t coddle ourselves our whole lives. We need to feel heartbreak. We need to feel pain. We need to feel sadness. Without darkness there is no light, and the bad things make the good things even better.” 

While in-person communication can cause people to feel a sense of fear or dread, it can also be easier to comprehend. 

“The internet makes it so much harder to have civil conversations when you can’t see somebody face-to-face,” Wamsley said. “It’s way easier to dehumanize them, not have as much empathy for them. It also makes it easier to take comments out of context, because you don’t have facial expressions or emotional tone of voice, so people can come across as colder or angrier without those other cues to rely on.”

While social media was originally intended to be a way people could form connections, multiple different obstacles have overtaken these platforms. These obstacles, whether they are the ads and distractions thanks to the monetization of these platforms or the confusion due to the lack of direct communication, have made it difficult for social media to continue bringing people to the kind of community they are searching for. 

If people are trying to find connections today, with such a heavy presence of technology, they need to be more intentional. This intentionality can be shown by pushing through the obstacles discussed above found on social media, or being brave and moving to the old-fashioned way of talking to people out in public. 

“Open yourself up to be silly and make mistakes,” Wamsley said. “I think that a lot of us end up isolating ourselves because we’re worried about rejection, and it can just feel really scary to get out there. I think that you’re gonna have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince, that’s the case for many things.” 

Finding connection in this digital age can take a lot of effort and time, especially if people are looking for a strong and long-lasting community. It can be easy for a person to hide behind their screen and not show their real selves. However, the most authentic version of a person is required to find real community, whether it be online or in-person.