Essentially, the academic conversation revolves around parasocial relationships and their identifying demographics. Previous research has found how such relationships allow children to develop identifying characteristics, and ultimately enables personality development as they shift themselves to be more like the figures they observe. There was limited research on parasocial relationships until the COVID-19 pandemic, when the abundance of such relationships skyrocketed as people began depending on celebrities and social media figures to fulfill their lacking socialization requirements. As the prevalence increased significantly, people began relying on them, and it ultimately resulted in increased rates of isolation. 

Although there is a large amount of previous literature discussing the effects of parasocial relationships on children and adolescents whose characteristics and personalities are more malleable and impressionable, there is a lack in research regarding parasocial relationships and their correlation to adults. Previous literature has explored the effects of such relationships during the pandemic era and found that they have become increasingly abundant due to higher dependence on social media. It was found that although parasocial relationships helped fill the lack of face-to-face communication by seemingly fulfilling socialization requirements; however, it can inevitable cause isolation if clear boundaries and controls are not maintained. By working to identify the demographics that characterize those who create stronger parasocial relationships, we can work to find a target audience for spreading awareness of the effects of such relationships.

Currently, I am working to get responses on my survey. It is particularly difficult because as a minor, I do not know many adults other than my parents, so I am having to stretch to reach different age ranges older than 18. When I receive a response, I count up the total number of points received by giving each question a point value. Then, their point value is ranked on a scale of 0-85 to rank the strength of their parasocial relationship and find the correlation of relationship strength to demographics such as gender, ethnicity, and generation. Initially, I was planning on sending my survey out individually; however, I decided to begin asking others to send the survey out and utilize snowball sampling to recieve the most responses.