How Social Media Reshaped the Stories We Look Up To There was a time when the people we admired most were known to us personally, such as a...

How Social Media Reshaped the Stories We Look Up To

There was a time when the people we admired most were known to us personally, such as a parent, a teacher, or a community elder whose choices we had witnessed across years. Admiration was grounded in proximity and shared experience. Today, for a growing number of people, the figures they most admire are strangers encountered through a screen: influencers, content creators, and online celebrities whose carefully curated lives appear both aspirational and accessible. This shift is not merely cultural. It is psychological, and its consequences deserve serious examination.

Researchers in media psychology describe the emotional bonds that form between social media users and online personalities as parasocial relationships, connections that feel deeply personal yet remain fundamentally one-sided. The person being admired has no knowledge of the admirer; the relationship exists entirely in the mind of the observer. Studies published in Current Opinion in Psychology and PubMed confirm that these bonds activate the same neural pathways as genuine social relationships, which explains why they feel so real. Yet because they are built on curated content rather than lived experience, they are also inherently selective, since the audience sees only what the creator chooses to reveal.

This selective visibility distorts the nature of admiration itself. Traditional role models were admired for how they behaved under pressure, in private, and across time. Parasocial figures, by contrast, are admired for an image, one that is managed, edited, and strategically presented. When that image is the foundation of admiration, what is actually being admired is not a life, but a performance. Research consistently shows that this form of admiration is more susceptible to disillusionment and more likely to generate negative self-comparison than admiration rooted in real-world observation.

The stories we genuinely grow from are not always the most polished. They are the ones that show us how someone navigated uncertainty, handled failure, and kept going without an audience watching. Social media, for all its reach, tends to filter out precisely these moments, replacing the complexity of a real life with the coherence of a brand.

[Adapted from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001573]

Question 23: The word “curated” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to __________.

A. arranged        B. polished        C. recorded        D. selected

Question 24: The word “they” in paragraph 2 refers to __________.

A. studies published in journals        B. parasocial relationships/bonds

C. neural pathways                        D. creators’ revealed content

Question 25: The word “susceptible” in paragraph 3 is OPPOSITE in meaning to __________.

A. impervious        B. open        C. sensitive        D. likely

Question 26: According to the passage, which of the following is NOT mentioned as a characteristic of traditional role models as opposed to modern parasocial figures?

A. Their actions were consistently observed over an extended period.

B. Their responses to adversity were witnessed in person and in private settings.

C. Their influence was primarily derived from an edited and managed public image.

D. Their relationship with their admirers was built upon shared physical proximity.

Question 27: What does the author imply about the relationship between "selective visibility" and the psychological well-being of the admirer?

A. It provides a safer environment for social comparison than real-world observation.

B. It enhances the authenticity of the bond because the audience only sees the best moments.

C. It fosters a skewed perception that makes the observer more prone to feeling inadequate.

D. It ensures that the admirer's brain activates neural pathways that prevent disillusionment.

Question 28: Which of the following best paraphrases the underlined sentence in paragraph 4?

A. Broad though its influence may be, social media is inclined to omit such unpolished instances, effectively supplanting life’s nuances with a uniform branded identity.

B. It is the far-reaching nature of social media that facilitates the integration of life’s intricacies into a seamless brand, rather than excluding them as perceived.

C. Under no circumstances does the extensive reach of social media allow for the preservation of a brand's coherence unless real-life complexities are prioritized.

D. Had social media not prioritized the coherence of a brand, its vast reach would have been insufficient to filter out the complexities inherent in authentic human experiences.

Question 29: In which paragraph does the author suggest that the perceived intimacy between an audience and an online celebrity is a neurological illusion that lacks reciprocal awareness?

A. Paragraph 1         B. Paragraph 2         C. Paragraph 3         D. Paragraph 4

Question 30: In which paragraph does the author contrast the criteria for admiring traditional role models versus modern online personalities?

A. Paragraph 1        B. Paragraph 2        C. Paragraph 3        D. Paragraph 4