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Starved of Affection at Home, Young Chinese Seek Out ‘Digital Parents’

Many young Chinese feel unable to emotionally connect with their parents. So they’re turning to online influencers for the intimacy they crave.

Mar 25, 2024, Sixth Tone

Fan Xiaotong, a middle school student from Shanghai, likes to share everything with her parents. Whenever she feels stressed about a math test, or eats a tasty snack, the 13-year-old will pull out her phone and send a message to her mom and dad.

The couple she is contacting, however, aren’t really her biological family. In fact, Fan, who spoke to Sixth Tone using a pseudonym to protect her privacy, doesn’t even know their real names. They are a pair of parenting influencers that she follows on China’s version of TikTok, Douyin.

Fan has become a massive fan of the influencers, so much so that she has come to view them as her “digital parents.” For the teenager, the couple embody a positive, affectionate style of parenting — the kind she has never experienced at home.

She knows that in reality the couple barely know who she is, and they often don’t respond to her messages. But Fan doesn’t care. She just loves the feeling of sharing her feelings with the couple, and the thrill of occasionally getting an encouraging reply.

Fan is far from alone. There has been an increase in the number of parenting influencers on Chinese social media in recent months, but the audience for this content often isn’t parents looking for advice; it’s children captivated by the influencers’ open, caring attitudes.

Many of these young fans feel unable to connect with their own parents, and come to see the influencers as an alternative source of familial affection. Some, like Fan, even go as far as to start viewing the influencers as their digital parents, pouring their hearts out to them in message after message.

外刊精读145：缺乏家庭关爱的年轻人，找起了“电子父母”

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外刊精读145：缺乏家庭关爱的年轻人，找起了“电子父母”