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are fandoms the solution to feeling lonely, or are they making it worse?
“these kids coming up, who are now in their preteens, they've already learned how to play this game ... they've learned how to play that game of generating parasocial intimacy."
jul 14 2023
8 minute read
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it’s difficult to feel lonely when we’re connecting with a group of people, and at taylor swift’s record-breaking eras tour, the fans are seizing that opportunity.
“i get to stand on stage every night of this tour and watch the most beautiful things happen,” the “lover” singer told the roughly 60,000 fans at the u.s. bank stadium in minneapolis on her june 24 a stop. “like, i watch you guys make friends with each other. i watch you bond. i watch you give each other friendship bracelets. i see so many beautiful interactions happen, and i hear so many stories about friend who were made at these shows,”
but swift quickly pivoted to another, darker aspect to the fandom that had caught her considerable criticism in recent months.
“ … what i’m trying to tell you, is that i am not putting this album out so that you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think i might have written a song about 14 million years ago. i do not care. we have all grown up. we’re good.”
swift had made the speech ahead of the july 7th re-release of her “speak now” record, an album chronicling the ups and downs of life as a teenager. swift became famous for penning relatable, autobiographical songs that speak to common experiences of crushes, love, and heartbreak. devoted fans have combed through her lyrics, looking for any clues as to what these songs are about. some of these fans — incensed enough to defend the person they say has been there with them through so much of their own lives — have taken the extra step of launching online attacks against potential subjects of her more heart-wrenching songs.
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intense fandoms and the power they wield is nothing new (beetlemania of the 1960s has sometimes been referred to as a cult) 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 of working with “micro-influencers,” online personalities with 10,000 to 100,000 followers. we’re fans of, well, being fans.
alexandra gold, phd, a clinical fellow in psychology at harvard medical school and mass general brigham, says being a fan of a celebrity or a sports team is generally a positive thing. public figures may become a source of inspiration when they share stories of overcoming life’s obstacles or how they deal with health concerns, providing comfort and motivation. joining a fandom can also offer opportunities to meet others with shared interests and hobbies.
“ connecting to other people who are also fans of a certain artist or celebrity, or public figure brings that sense of friendship,” says gold. “people meet their friends through fandoms. people have a community that they belong to around the shared interest.”
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there’s also nothing wrong with seeking entertainment or a break from the stress of our daily lives.
“ as with most things on the internet, there are wonderful examples of people engaging in forms of relationship and activities that one could only say are positive,” says romin tafarodi, an associate professor of psychology at the university of toronto.
“ … and then there’s also the other side.”
with millennials being the test case for social media, which was then perfected on gen z, we’re now into our third generation of digital natives: generation alpha. for many, the dominant forms of entertainment are centred around platforms like twitch, youtube, instagram, or tiktok. but rather than the brain-rotting, older forms of entertainment, like t.v. or movies, these creators look directly into the camera, appearing to talk to you.
tafarodi notes that technology and research into consumer behaviour means public figures are able to create the illusion of intimacy better than ever before. a 2015 study from google found four in ten millennials on youtube felt their favourite youtuber understood them better than their friends, and seven in ten said that youtube creators change and shape culture. but, while we connect with what feels like authentic humans who just get it, “it’s all still part of a formula.”
even fans are feeling lonely
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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. when we’re constantly being bombarded with strangers sharing deeply personal stories once reserved to only our most trusted confidants, responding to that generic “how are you?” text message from someone we know slowly starts to feel less important. it can be tempting to forego the risk of rejection, and the time and effort it takes to develop a real relationship (some studies estimate hundreds of hours), when someone is performing intimacy right in front of us. add in the some other stressors from modern life: constantly being bombarded with videos of people having more fun than us, the economic downturn making off-line hobbies considerably more expensive, a global pandemic that made us more reliant on remote communication, and it’s no wonder we’re in the midst of a loneliness epidemic.
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younger generations are feeling the brunt of this disconnection. the telstra’s talking loneliness report revealed a majority of australian millennials (54 per cent) and gen z (51 per cent) feel lonely often, always or some of the time — the highest of any age groups. and research from 2015 shows 12th-graders were going out less often than eighth-graders did in 2009.
how we use social media may play a role in our connectedness. a study of almost 4,000 adults during the pandemic found social media use correlated with lower levels of loneliness in older generations (boomers and the greatest generation) but was associated with higher levels of loneliness in the youngest generation studied (gen z). findings from a study by mesfin awoke bekalu, research scientist in the lee kum sheung center for health and happiness at harvard t.h. chan school of public health, also indicated that using social media purposefully to connect with others was associated with positive outcomes. “social media may provide individuals with a platform that overcomes barriers of distance and time, allowing them to connect and reconnect with others and thereby expand and strengthen their in-person networks and interactions,” bekalu writes.
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so, using social media purposefully, to connect with others and foster two-way relationships may have some sort of protective effects against the negative impacts of social media. but what about kids who were born into a world where these compelling one-sided relationships are served up right beside relationships with friends and family?
“we didn’t have a choice to know any life without ipads or iphones. i think we like our phones more than we like actual people,” psychologist jean m. twenge quotes a 13-year-old girl in “have smartphones destroyed a generation?” for this gen z-er, the majority of her interactions with “real life” friends was online, through apps like snapchat.
and with so many engaging stories available in the palm of our hands, younger generations are competing for attention — content creators for their own micro-pool of followers.
“these kids coming up, who are now in their preteens, they’ve already learned how to play this game,” says tafarodi. “ … from a very early age they’ve not only learned how to use the technology in terms of proficiency, but they’ve also learned how to play that game of generating parasocial intimacy … they know how to perform in such a way that it brings the audience closer to them.”
trying to walk away from fandoms might not work
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as much as we’re starting to understand the damage of constantly able to access smartphones and the one-sided content, modern solutions might not fit the bill. “digital detoxes,” or the nuclear option of straight up deleting social media accounts, may not be that successful. and when we’re in that fandom, with that celebrity or influencer who feels like a real and dear friend, the option to step away can come with its own source of anguish.
“ there’s an interesting phenomenon in the research field of parasocial relationships called parasocial breakup,” says tafarodi. “parasocial breakups are situations where, for example, a celebrity just withdraws from public life, and so, what happens to all those people who felt that celebrity was their close friend? it’s experienced emotionally like a breakup.”
the reverse could be argued for separating ourselves from a public figure we care about.
instead of trying to cut it out of our lives all at once, which takes herculean effort considering how easy it is to jump right back on, gold recommends a more gradual approach. taking stock of just how much time we devote to each platform and slowly cutting back on the minutes we spend every day. gold also recommends taking some time to consider what you want to replace that phone time with, enjoyable activities to replace the previously enjoyable activity of consuming content.
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the change doesn’t have to be drastic to start seeing results. a report by the cigna group indicates that simply increasing the frequency of in-person interactions — from monthly to weekly, or weekly to daily — can decrease feelings of loneliness and isolation. interactions don’t even have to be overly deep or meaningful to get results (although that does help), just connecting with other people is beneficial.
so, maybe, it’s time to text that friend back and ask them out for a coffee.
emma jones is a multimedia editor with healthing. you can reach her at emjones@postmedia.com or on instagram and twitter @jonesyjourn.
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