Where the word came from

In 1956, sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl noticed that TV hosts were acting strangely for the time: looking straight into the camera, addressing the viewer as "you," joking as if they were sitting in your kitchen. And viewers started treating them like acquaintances in return. The researchers called this one-sided closeness parasocial. The prefix "para-" means "beside": a relationship next to the real thing, similar to it, but not it.

Researchers separate two layers. Parasocial interaction is the feeling of a conversation while you're watching, as if the host is talking to you personally. A parasocial relationship is what's left afterward: an attachment that lives on between episodes. In recent years the word moved out of academic papers and into everyday speech. In 2025, the Cambridge Dictionary even named "parasocial" its word of the year.

What it looks like in real life

Usually people don't even notice they have a bond like this. They just:

  • know the name of their favorite YouTuber's dog and which city her mom lives in;
  • listen to a podcast on the way to work and argue with the hosts in their head;
  • worry about a TV character as if a friend were in trouble;