You’ve got a friend in me - The Benefits of Parasocial Relationships
You’ve got a friend in me - The Benefits of Parasocial Relationships
Have you ever wondered why Dora, from Dora the Explorer, takes a deliberately long pause after directing a question to young viewers? This type of interaction invites participation and maintains children’s attention. This seemingly social exchange that occurs through the screen can facilitate relationship-building akin to a face-to-face interaction, such that over time children will form relationships with their favourite media characters. These one-sided, emotionally charged relationships between a person and a media character are called parasocial relationships.
What makes a parasocial relationship?
Parasocial relationships in early childhood (0-8 years old) typically involve three factors: 1) attachment and friendship, 2) human-like needs (personification), and 3) social realism.
Attachment to media characters occurs when children seek proximity to them for comfort and security, as with attachment to a real person. Perceived friendship also strengthens this bond. For instance, preschoolers were more likely to transfer a problem solving solution to a similar, real-life scenario if they had greater trust in the character demonstrating the problem. In addition, school-age children prefer and are more strongly attached to characters of their same gender.
Personification refers to children attributing person-like qualities to media characters, including humanlike needs such as hunger. Children’s nurturing behaviors (e.g., putting to bed) towards a physical character toy are positively related to learning from that same character via video.
Social realism is the likelihood a media character could exist in the real world. The more realistic a child’s favorite character appears and acts, the greater the strength of the parasocial relationship.
Can children learn from media characters?
The answer to this question varies and can be largely dependent on the age of the child. For example, young children have trouble applying what they learn from two-dimensional (2D) sources, such as television, to the physical world, which is termed the transfer deficit. This effect can be mitigated when the 2D content is socially relevant to children (e.g., familiarity). For example, toddlers were more likely to learn an early math skill from watching a video of a familiar character, Elmo, than an unfamiliar character from Taiwan, DoDo. Additionally, children did even better on this task if they exhibited nurturing behaviors toward a physical toy of the familiar character (e.g., feeding it, rocking it like a baby).
However, it should be noted that familiarity alone isn’t always enough to promote learning through media. In another study, 18-month-olds were given a toy for three months that was either personalized to them or not personalized at all. The personalized toy said the child’s name and shared similar interests (e.g., same favorite food), whereas the impersonalized toy called the children ‘Pal’, had the opposite gender, and had randomly selected interests. After three months, children in both groups (i.e., those with personalized vs. impersonalized) watched a video demonstration of their toy’s character complete a math task and were then given the opportunity to try the task themselves. Their performance was compared to children who didn’t have the toy for three months and didn’t watch the video demonstration (control group). The children who played with the personalized toy (but not the impersonal toy), outperformed the control group on the math task. Again, more nurturing behaviors during toy play were related to improved performance. The authors concluded that the emotional bond children had with the personalized character was the reason for their improvement, rather than simply being familiar with the character.
Here are some actionable insights into how you might foster these parasocial relationships through media:
Attachment – create characters that make children feel safe and comfortable. In addition, show diverse characters so children are able to relate to them and build stronger attachments and relationships with them.
Personification – create characters that children can perceive as friends with thoughts and emotions, wants and needs.
Social realism – the extent of a character’s social realism becomes increasingly important with a child’s age. Imaginative play and treating characters as real during play begins in toddlerhood and peaks when children are about 4 years old. As children get older, their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality improves, so it’s important to consider social realism during this developmental transition and beyond.
Personalization – children learn better when the information presented on-screen is socially relevant to them. For example, providing the option to program a child’s name and interests to a toy/app can be beneficial to learning from that character.
Take advantage of the multimedia landscape – provide a variety of platforms in which children can engage and interact with their favorite media characters (i.e., toys, apps, websites, shows, etc.).
Encourage parent participation – design content that invites the parent to participate, such as an eBook that encourages dialogic questioning. Parents can facilitate the parasocial relationship by encouraging their child to interact with the character on and offscreen (toy).
Social Contingency – newer media affords the design of intelligent characters that can provide timely, personalized responses to a child’s input, making the interaction more like a face to face conversation. For instance, preschoolers were more likely to respond to an onscreen character when the character seemed to wait for their response or repeated unanswered questions in comparison to when the character waited for a typical 2-second delay.
Brittany Huber, PhD
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers