A Model and Measure of US Parents' Perceptions of Young Children's Parasocial Relationships

Abstract

Children's parasocial relationships have been understudied, even though recent research suggests that children learn better from socially meaningful than from socially irrelevant media characters. This study articulates a model of parasocial relationship development among children and, in the process, establishes new measures of children's parasocial interactions and parasocial relationships. Parents of children ( ≤  8 years old) completed an online questionnaire about their child's favorite media character. The measure of parental perceptions of children's parasocial relationships was composed of three dimensions: character personification, social realism, and attachment. The measure was then utilized as the endogenous variable in a model predicting parental perceptions of children's parasocial relationships. The model revealed that engagement with toy replicas of media characters, repeated media exposure, parent encouragement, and parasocial interactions were significantly related to parental perceptions of young children's parasocial relationships. The possible influence of parasocial relationships on children's potential to learn from media characters is discussed.