Loneliness. We’ve all felt it. That feeling when you feel
alone but that’s the last thing you actually want to be. Whether it’s a Friday
night with nothing to do, weeks of being busy at work that leave little time to
socialize, a new breakup, or moving to a new city, feeling lonely is just plain
painful. Loneliness is defined as the disturbing experience that occurs when a person feels that his or her network of
social relations does not fulfill the person’s needs in important ways. To me, it feels like something is missing in my life. Our
basic needs in life are not only food and shelter, but to feel wanted and to
want people in our lives in return.
So what happens when we need to fill the void we call loneliness?
Some people turn to the bottle while others turn on their TV. If you’re the
type to turn on your television when you feel a little lonely you might find
yourself getting connected with certain TV shows. My go to TV shows to beat
feeling alone are Lost, True Blood, and Grey’s Anatomy. If you’re like me then
you can find yourself literally building relationships with the characters on
these shows. We get attached to characters like Jack Shepard, Sookie
Stackhouse, and McDreamy. Why is this? Why do we get so attached to TV
characters? One possible answer that many scholars have studied is called
parasocial interaction. You’re probably thinking…parasocial WHAT? Let’s break
this term down. According to the dictionary the term “para” means beside or adjacent
to, and distinct from, but analogous to. The term social is defined as needing
companionship. So now let’s bring those two terms together and what do we get?
Distinct from, and needing companionship. To me this is starting to sound like
the relationship I have with McDreamy. To elaborate, scholars define parasocial
interaction as a one-sided relationship that we create with media figures, and
in particular, TV characters. This relationships gets to a level where we come
to know these characters as our friends and we see them filling a particular
role in our life. So this explains why we turn on the TV when we are feeling a
little down in the dumps. 
Three researchers from large Midwestern universities, Qi
Wang, Edward, Fink, and Deborah Cai, wanted to know more about the correlation
between feeling lonely and turning on our TV’s. To do this they studied four
different types of loneliness and the amounts of parasocial interaction that
took place with each. They came up with four types of loneliness; family,
romantic, and social. I found this part very interesting because I didn’t know
that there could be different types of loneliness. The first type of loneliness
is family loneliness. Family loneliness is where people feel like they lack
family bonds, Wang Fink and Cai thought that family loneliness would definitely
lead to higher levels of parasocial interaction. Romantic loneliness occurs
when we do not have a romantic partner in our lives, or when our relationship
my be unfulfilled which leaves a void in our lives. The researchers wanted to
know if romantic loneliness would even be related to parasocial interaction
since romantic relationships are more physical and TV cannot fill that void.
The third type of loneliness was social, this is where we feel that there is a
“perceived discrepancy between desired and obtained social relationships” (p.
94). The researchers thought that people who felt socially lonely would turn on
their TV’s to create parasocial interactions to temper loneliness. The final
type of loneliness, chronic loneliness, was also measured. Chronic loneliness
is where we feel alone all the time and it is something that we cannot shake.
It is also part of being depressed. The researchers looked at people who felt
all three types of loneliness to get to chronic loneliness. 
To find out if Wand, Fink, and Cai were right about their
predictions about loneliness and parasocial interaction they tested both men
and women with each type of loneliness and the relating levels of parasocial
interaction. What they found was that women experiencing family and social
loneliness resorted to parasocial interaction more than men did. However, men
that felt chronically lonely turned to parasocial interaction more than women
did. Romantically lonely people, both men and women, did not turn to parasocial
interaction.
So what do these result mean?
According to the research lonely people do turn to TV to
fill a void. So if you’re feeling a little stranded by your friends and family,
turning on your TV more often might not be a bad thing. Television can fulfill
many functions in our lives. Not only is it always there, waiting to be
watched, but it also tells us stories, informs us, and makes us feel connected.
If you’re filling that sting that all of us feel when we are newly single or
unfulfilled in our relationships you can also turn on the TV but it might not
help you feel better. My remedy for being single is to reconnect with your
friends and get out of the house. Being a hermit in your house with ice cream
and a chick flick might make you feel better in the moment but in the long run
it probably won’t. To me, relational loneliness passes. We are single, and it
hurts for a while, but as time passes we get over it. To use parasocial
interaction to help with loneliness we need to first find out why we are
feeling lonely. Once we know that we need to proceed with caution. Parasocial
interaction can only help stifle feelings of loneliness. It won’t solve our
loneliness.
Want more info?
Wang,
Q., Fink, E.L., & Cai, D.A. (2008). Loneliness, gender and parasocial
interaction: A uses and gratifications approach. Communication Quarterly, 56, 87-109.
