Children’s Parasocial Breakups With Media Characters From the Perspective of the Parent

Abstract

Children's parasocial relationships (PSRs) with media characters end through a process called PSR breakups. An online parent report measure was used to describe preschool and school-aged children's breakups with media characters, as well as the attributes of past and current favorite characters. According to parents (N ¼ 138), 51% of children experienced PSR breakups. PSRs lasted about two years before a breakup occurred. Past and current favorite characters were animated, human-like, and embedded in fantastical content. Current favorite characters taught fewer academic lessons than past favorite characters. Both boys and girls had current favorite characters that were more gendered in their physical appearance than past favorite characters. However, girls' current favorite characters had more masculine traits than past favorite characters. Our findings suggest possible avenues for the design of future media characters that can teach as they entertain.

Adult Reports of Pokémon GO Play: Stronger Parasocial Relationships Predict Increased Nostalgia and Decreased App Play

“…These findings provide further evidence for the ongoing importance of memorable experiences with characters as a facet of social relationships . It also appears that if children breakup with previous favorite characters (see Aguiar, Richards, Bond, Putnam, & Calvert, 2018), they continue to recall close feelings for them years later, as indicated by the long-term emergence of the attachment and friendship dimension of PSRs with a formerly favorite Poke´mon character. These imaginary characters are also remembered as having human-like needs, such as feeling hungry and sleepy, which means that these adults gave these characters animate qualities that are consistent with being alive (Calvert & Richards, 2014).…”

A paradigm for assessing adults' and children's concepts of artificially intelligent virtual characters

“…Nevertheless, socially relevant media characters might not have a lasting impact on children's lives. The typical parasocial relationship lasts about 2 years, and parasocial "breakup" commonly occurs because children outgrow the media character (Aguiar, Richards, Bond, Putnam, & Calvert, 2019;Bond & Calvert, 2014b). In future research, it would be worthwhile to investigate how children's concepts of a socially relevant virtual character differ from novel characters, and the ways in which this might impact an agents' influence on children's behaviors and learning.…”