Parasocial Relationships
Social support amidst physical distancing
Have you ever had an acquaintance become a friend or best friend? Well, that just happened to me recently. Two people who I didn’t know very well became my best friends during the pandemic. I learned all about their lives and I’m going to remember them as a big part of my senior year of college. There’s just one hitch: they don’t even know I exist. My new best friends are Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, the hosts of the popular podcast Armchair Expert. Similarly to how I catch up with a friend, Dax and Monica share both significant and inconsequential life updates during the episodes. I follow along, laughing and listening, but don’t have any interaction with these friends. This probably sounds one-sided, and it is.
In fact, there’s a term for it: a parasocial relationship. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Professor Tilo Hartmann (2016) provides a useful definition: “a parasocial relationship can be understood as any social relationship users develop towards characters they only know from the media.” At some point, you’ve probably had this sort of relationship, but why would we want to?
If you’re like me and have increased your consumption of talk shows, podcasts, or celebrities’ social media pages since the onset of social restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you can blame that on humans’ need to belong. Belongingness theory asserts that “human beings have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships” (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). COVID-19 restrictions made everyday gatherings socially irresponsible, leaving individuals, especially those who live alone or in small households, with an unquenched thirst for belongingness. Belongingness is a need just like food, water, and shelter. We have an instinctual drive to fulfill this need. While the pandemic restricts opportunities to socialize, podcasts, social media pages, and other forms of digital media enable the formation of one-sided relationships that can satisfy the need to belong.
For me, there was an inverse correlation between the frequency of social events and the regularity of my podcast listening. As my social schedule grew sparse, I began to listen to Dax and Monica multiple times a week. At some point in my listening, I stopped caring so much about the interview guests. I began listening to nearly all of the new Armchair Expert episodes for the sole reason that Monica and Dax would be there. In short, I compensated for a lack of two-sided, reciprocal social bonds by doubling down on my parasocial bond with podcast hosts. They helped with my feelings of loneliness.
Despite what my feelings told me, I’m not alone — pandemic-induced loneliness is common. A study published in the December 2020 issue of Psychiatry Research investigated the prevalence of feelings of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic by asking a sample of about 1,000 U.S. adults to self-report their feelings using two questionnaires. It found that
Loneliness scores increased significantly from April through September 2020 and were significantly higher for those reporting they were under stay-at-home, shelter-in-place, or lockdown orders compared to those reporting no restrictions. (Kilgore et al., 2020)
Chances are if you’re lonely, then you’ll experience an unmet need to belong. What more convenient way to meet this need than to form a parasocial relationship? Hence my newfound friendships. This is the logic of “loneliness compensation”, the hypothesis that “lonelier people may maintain stronger parasocial relationships” (Hartmann, 2016). Similarly, the “social surrogacy hypothesis” proposes that “parasocial relationships in favored television programs can provide the experience of belonging” (Derrick et al., 2009). While neither has been conclusively proven, there is data supporting each of these hypotheses.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic is just one example of a situation in which individuals face limited opportunities for socialization. Space travel provides an interesting example of intense isolation. In the 2010–2011 Mars 500 experiment, six European Space Agency crew members experienced 520 consecutive days in an isolation chamber. To help combat the negative psychological impacts of sustained isolation, the men were equipped with books, movies, and personal laptops. While these items were far from a cure-all for the challenges of prolonged isolation, their presence suggests that people find value in the one-sided connections media can provide when reciprocal relationships are limited.
Nursing home residents are another group that may experience loneliness. In Aging, Media, and Culture, Anthony R. Bardo and C. Lee Harrington describe the results of individual interviews and focus groups with nursing home residents in Flanders, Belgium. These qualitative studies focused on participants’ thoughts about celebrity, both in general and in reference to specific media figures such as Princess Diana. Regarding nursing home residents’ relationships with celebrities as [para]social companions, Bardo and Harrington (2014) wrote:
Residents’ positive expressions were toward humble and ordinary celebrities and the negative expressions toward arrogant celebrities who behave extraordinarily, like “stars.”
Just as you may not grow close with someone you find a braggart, your parasocial relationships are probably with media characters you find approachable or relatable.
How do parasocial relationships and the current surge in loneliness relate to the marketing field?
For one, parasocial relationship research helps to explain the success of influencer marketing. For example, brands like Squarespace, ZipRecruiter, and HelloFresh are paying for advertisement spots on podcasts. These ads are read by sponsors or by the podcast hosts themselves. A Nielsen article explains that “the ads that hosts read drive more brand recall than non-host-read ads” (“Host-Read Podcast Ads,” 2020). Given the impact of parasocial relationships, which loyal podcast listeners have likely developed, this is unsurprising. Ads and commercials featuring unfamiliar personalities can seem impersonal, whereas influencers’ product endorsements feel like recommendations from a friend. Given the trust listeners develop toward their parasocial companions, it’s no wonder why TikTok influencer Charli D’Amelio’s drink at Dunkin’ led to a 57% increase in Dunkin’ app downloads.
Second, brands should try to tap into the heightened demand for social connection during these isolating times. Back in March, Chipotle promoted Zoom hangouts with celebrities such as Colton Underwood from The Bachelor and dubbed the program “Chipotle Together.”
Lastly, and perhaps most obviously, brands that connect people virtually have recorded heightened usage during the pandemic. Consider the success of Twitch, the video-game live streaming service owned by Amazon. According to Statista, “the average number of concurrent viewers on Twitch” rose from 1.44 million in the first quarter of 2020 to 2.34 million in the second quarter, a rise correlated with the beginning of stay-at-home orders in the U.S. In addition to watching gamers, Twitch users can use the platform’s chat feature to communicate with fellow viewers as well as the streamers themselves. Because of its social functionality, Twitch is a resource for socialization for people physically separated from one another.
Being human during the pandemic feels awfully paradoxical: to maintain mental health, you may seek time with loved ones, but to maintain physical health, you must follow social distancing guidelines. While parasocial relationships with media figures may not provide you the same fulfillment as dinner with a friend, they can serve as a compromised solution to a current problem. In “Parasocial Interaction, the COVID‑19 Quarantine, and Digital Age Media”, Carol Laurent Jarzyna (2020) writes of the pandemic and parasocial interaction:
…[parasocial interaction] should never completely replace real socialization, but it is a needed supplement when the consequences of real socialization are grave.
Just as you might take vitamin D supplements when you are spending less time outside, you might find yourself forging one-sided relationships with media figures during this period of pandemic-induced restrictions on social gatherings. While listening to Dax Shepard on Armchair Expert isn’t the same as sharing dinner with my real-life friends, it restores a bit of the social connection I have been missing.
Besides, my perceived friendship with Dax may not be so one-sided after all: he did like my comment on his Instagram page once.
Shelby Smith is an intern at Olson Zaltman
