I was barely 14 years old when he was the singer of a popular boy band one direction Zayn Malik left the group and decided to build a solo career.
It affected me so much that the next day, after a whole night of crying, I couldn't go to school. I felt like someone I knew had died. And I wasn't the only one.
Tears of millions teenage girls around the world have led to media outlets like CNN publishing the guidelines parents how can their children "survive" that shocking loss.
Ten years later, the internet was "broken" by the announcement of the engagement of singer Taylor Swift and her partner, NFL player Travis Kelce.
As I scrolled through social media, I noticed the same intensity of emotion that I and millions of other girls felt in 2015, only in the opposite direction – instead of despair, people expressed such euphoria that you'd think it was a close relative getting married.
By then I had learned a lot about parasocial relationships. So what are they?
As if I know you.
Imagine listening to your favorite podcast every day. The presenters share a lot of details from their private lives, and what they don't say on the podcast is easy to find out from their social networks.
Over time, you get the feeling that you know them, that they are your friends. Then one day you see them in a coffee shop and decide to go up to them and say hello, but they look at you like a stranger - because you are.
"The appearance of closeness is primarily encouraged by the sharing of private and everyday content by celebrities," he tells za our newsletter Medjuvreme psychologist Darko Hinić, professor at the Faculty of Science and Mathematics in Kragujevac.
"By sharing information, especially pictures and personal comments about what the celebrity did during the day, what he ate, drank, where he was, we create the impression that we know that person personally, because we normally don't know this information about unknown people," says Hinić.
This is how parasocial bonds are formed, one-sided relationships with persons we do not know personally, and who are mostly unaware of our existence. And those are very mild examples.
The most extreme ones sometimes end tragically. Mark Chapman, the man who killed Beatles frontman John Lennon, believed he knew him and was 'saving' him from his 'fake life'.
What does "parasocial" mean?
The term "parasocial" was coined by sociologists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wall as early as 1956 in the essay "Mass Communication and Parasocial Interaction: Observations of the Intimate at a Distance" in the journal Psychiatry.
"One of the striking features of the new mass media is that it creates the illusion of a personal relationship with the performer," they wrote. They called this new form of media encounter "parasocial interaction".
What would those two say if they knew what the "new mass media" are like today? However, television is limited by the programming scheme, magazines had to be bought at the newsstand, and today social networks have neither beginning nor end.
Parasocial relationships are not inherently bad or good – they just exist. The need to feel connected to other people is part of human evolution.
"Humans evolved to thrive in groups, probably because around 250.000 years ago you had to rely on other people to survive by building social relationships," writes Arthur C. Brooks, professor of sociology at Harvard University.
Healthy boundaries needed
However, social media has made celebrities seem closer to us than ever. That's why it's never been easier to feel connected to the stars of the world.
But healthy boundaries must be drawn. "Although the thesis that online social relationships do not necessarily take away the quality of relationships in the physical world is accepted today, this is not the case with the emergence of parasocial relationships," says Professor Hinić.
"A person, apart from a certain benefit of living indirectly through the successes and pleasures of others, through a parasocial relationship does not achieve the fulfillment of his authentic needs, he will not solve his problems or unsatisfactory social relationships, and above all, he will not receive real social support," he concludes.
