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Ask a teenager what they post online these days, and you may get a blank look in response. Posting has waned, scrolling has taken over, and what fills a feed now is more likely strategically produced content than friends’ photos. In a new essay, “Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media,” danah boyd argues the shift is significant enough to warrant a new name. danah is the Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University and founder of the Data & Society Research Institute. She helped coin the term “social network sites” in 2007, was a co-author of “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out” (2009), wrote “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” (2014), and has been a lasting influence in the connected learning community since its earliest days. In this conversation, danah discusses the transition from social media to parasocial media and unpacks the implications for young people. Question: What’s the critical issue? danah boyd: The essence of social media has changed: the practices that define social media in 2026 look extraordinarily different from what researchers like me were trying to document 20 years ago. I would argue — although many challenge me on this — that the “social” in “social media” has slowly become a misnomer. In 2006, most people who logged into MySpace and Facebook and Twitter regularly posted content because they were co-constructing sociable spaces to enjoy the companionship of others. In 2026, the content that is posted on the major social media sites is published by a very small subset of the platform’s users. Most social media users prioritize scrolling content published by people that they do not know rather than posting their own haphazard updates for friends. Even the vibes are different. The content published on social media is more strategically constructed, more intentionally curated, and more seemingly professional. Users are now lucky to see personal content that their friends are posting amid the slick content created by the advertisers, influencers, and other content creators who dominate most people’s feeds. What goes “viral” is now often manufactured in a lab, designed to appeal. In a world of algorithms and financialized platforms, this makes sense: highly polished content is rewarded. Welcome to the era of influencers. This is why I argue that “social media” is now better understood as “parasocial media.” Q: What is parasocial media? danah: Parasociality is the idea that you can be paying attention to someone who is typically a celebrity, someone who has built an audience and a following, but they don’t know that you exist. Parasociality has been around for as long as there have been celebrities. Take the Beatles, with some of the biggest fans ever: you could know every detail about John Lennon’s life, you could feel so close to him, but that was never a social, bi-directional relationship. Or think of Teen Magazine in the 1990s: you would read the magazine to obsessively learn the life details of the *NSYNC boys and tear out their pictures to post on your bedroom wall. For decades, broadcast TV made parasociality a common practice by minting pop culture celebrities that huge populations of fans would watch with every new episode. Influencers are today’s celebrities for young people. In my house, I hear: “Dude, did you see” that Minecraft influencer, whose name I can’t remember “go up against the Ender Dragon?” It’s the same kind of parasocial-celebrity-fandom at heart. My argument is that the platforms that we call “social media” aren’t focused on supporting sociality these days; they’re focused on encouraging parasociality. That’s why I call them parasocial media. Q: Why does this matter for young people right now? danah: Parasociality can be fun and fulfilling, but you don’t get one of the critical benefits of sociality: the building of a friendship that will actually support you when you’re in need. And while parasociality has been around for a long time, everything else about our social fabric has changed. When I think back to Beatlemania in the 1950s and 1960s, teens could work really hard to save up all their money to go to a show with their friends. Fandom played a crucial role in friendship. And even if you couldn’t make it to the show, there was something very social about being able to talk about your obsession with the Beatles. Now, young people have a fragmented media world with more atomized fan cultures, and the mega-celebrities, who have even broader appeal, are even further out of reach. Taylor Swift is just as intergenerationally appealing as The Beatles, but how many teens can afford tickets to see Taylor Swift with their friends? Accessibility to celebrity, while seemingly closer online, is also further away, and there’s less social connection around it. We have simultaneously erased the alternative role models and social fabric that used to surround young people. Consider, for example, how much intergenerational dynamics have changed. If you think back to the 50s and 60s, it wasn’t unusual for people to play sports or socialize across generations. In the United States today, that’s considered creepy. After decades of moral panics around stranger danger and fears that even friends’ parents might be potential abusers, young people have less access to non-custodial adults — like coaches, aunties, pastors, neighbors — than ever. Most parents don’t realize how important it is for their kids to have relationships with trusted adults other than them. Non-custodial adults model how to be an adult. But today, young people don’t typically witness adults building and maintaining friendships. Their primary role modeling of adult friendship is done by influencers on social media — but influencers get paid for drama, because that’s where there’s money to be made. More acutely, non-custodial adults are one of the critical lifesavers for young people in a mental health emergency. Q: What should those of us who care about connected learning be doing differently? danah: Conversations about connected learning often center tech. And tech is a notable part of kids’ lives. But we need... Read more »
Via Vladimir Kukharenko
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