“We tell our stories hoping someone will recognize themselves in them.What we are really hoping is that someone recognizes us.”
What if we are not addicted to social media at all? What if were
addicted to the possibility that, somewhere behind the screen,
someone might finally understand us?
Psychologists call these one-sided bonds parasocial relationships. They occur when we feel connected to a creator, celebrity, or even a fictional character who has no idea we exist. The idea is not new. In 1956, sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl described it as an"illusion of intimacy." What has changed is the technology. Social media allows that illusion to feel more real than ever before.
Imagine a student sitting alone at 2 a.m., overwhelmed by exams, uncertainty, or a problem they cannot explain to anyone around them. Instead of calling a friend, they open a familiar podcast, livestream, or creator’s video. They already know how this person speaks, jokes, reacts to failure, and offers advice. The voice is comforting because it feels familiar. For a while, the loneliness eases.
That comfort is not imaginary. Research published in recent years has found that parasocial relationships can reduce feelings of loneliness and provide emotional support, particularly during periods of social isolation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people reported turning to creators, streamers, and online personalities for a sense of routine, companionship, and emotional
stability when ordinary social interaction became difficult.
Yet beneath that comfort lies a more complicated reality. The creator may feel more emotionally available than the people in the student's actual life, not because the relationship is deeper, but because it is safer. Real relationships demand vulnerability, disagreement, patience, and the possibility of rejection.
Parasocial relationships demand none of these things. They allow us to experience familiarity without riskThe danger is not that parasocial relationships exist. Most people will form them at some point in their lives, and many are harmless.The danger emerges when they begin to replace rather than supplement real relationships. A creator can make us feel understood, but they cannot notice when we withdraw, challenge our assumptions, or sit beside us in moments that never make it online. The qualities that make parasocial relationships comforting are often the same qualities that prevent them from becoming genuine connection.
To understand why these relationships have become so powerful, it is necessary to look beyond technology and toward something far older. Human beings have never been motivated solely by survival. Long after our physical needs are met, we continue searching for belonging, recognition, and meaning. We do not simply want company; we want to feel known.
Social media has transformed everyday life into a continuous performance. Profiles, captions, stories, and status updates allow us to carefully curate how we appear to others. However, the more effort we invest in managing impressions, the harder it becomes to reveal the parts of ourselves that are unfinished, uncertain, or vulnerable the very parts that understanding
requires.
This is why simply deleting an app rarely solves the problem. The need for connection existed long before the technology. Long before smartphones, people wanted the same thing they want now: to belong, to connect, and to feel understood. Technology did not create that hunger; it merely found a way to feed it.
A person can have hundreds of followers, dozens of active chats, and a phone full of notifications, yet still feel isolated. The reason is that connection and understanding are not the same thing. You can know what someone ate for lunch, where they travelled last weekend, and what song they are currently obsessed with, and still have no idea what keeps them awake at night. Social media has made it easier than ever to see people, but it has not
necessarily made it easier to know them.
Perhaps the reason genuine understanding feels so rare today is that it demands something many of us find difficult. We often speak about wanting to be understood, yet understanding can only exist when we allow others to see us honestly. Not the polished version we post online, not the carefully edited version we present to the world, but the uncertain, contradictory,
unfinished version of ourselves.
But understanding has never been built on visibility alone. It is forged in the moments we cannot control—the difficult conversation that doesn't go as planned, the disagreement that reveals our blind spots, the apology we never wanted to make, or the truth we hoped someone would not notice. These moments are uncomfortable because they challenge the image we have
carefully constructed of ourselves. Yet they are also the moments in which genuine connection becomes possible.
Perhaps that is precisely what makes understanding so valuable: it is surprisingly rare.Most of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to present ourselves in ways that will be accepted, admired, or at the very least not rejected. We learn how to explain ourselves, how to manage impressions,
and how to reveal only certain parts of who we are. Yet being understood requires something different. It requires the willingness to be seen beyond the version we carefully construct.
This is where the promise of digital connection often falls short. We have never had more ways to communicate, yet many conversations remain at the surface. We exchange updates, reactions, and opinions, but often keep our fears, uncertainties, and contradictions hidden. The result is a strange paradox: we can be surrounded by interaction and still feel unseen.
Perhaps that is why parasocial relationships can feel so meaningful. They offer the feeling of closeness without the uncertainty that accompanies real relationships. There is comfort in familiarity, especially when life feels overwhelming. But familiarity is not the same as understanding. A creator may know how to speak to thousands of people at once, yet genuine
understanding can only emerge when two people are willing to know one another beyond what is convenient, comfortable, or carefully curated.
Maybe that is what we are really searching for when we open an app late at night or scroll a little longer than we intended. Not simply entertainment. Not merely distraction. We are searching for the feeling that someone sees us as we are and not as we perform ourselves to be. And perhaps the greatest irony of the digital age is that while technology has made it easier than ever to be visible, the challenge of being understood remains exactly the same.
"We have mastered the art of being seen by everyone
while quietly forgetting how to be understood by even
One."
Sources Consulted
Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance.
Bond, B. J. (2021). The development and influence of parasocial relationships during social isolation.
Research on digital communication, loneliness, and social connection during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By: Laxmi Atkari
BCA(2024-2028)