Anna Kai believes in self-lighting with gas. On Tic Tacas @maybe it’s bothShe markets beauty products for Garnier, Nivea and Nexxus Hair Care while giving relationship advice to her 1.3 million followers. “If you can make yourself believe that the man who doesn’t love you really loves you, then why can’t you make yourself believe that you’ll find a man who really loves you?”
For Blaine Anderson, finding the right partner is a matter of savvy marketing, something “great guys often don’t know how to do,” exclaims a note on his website. She has tips for every possible scenario that can and will arise during the dating process: how to text like a “man of great value,” What Mistakes to avoid on a first datehow make women obsessedand the best ways to attract them without speaking. In case you’re curious, it starts with good posture and grooming. “If you haven’t gone shopping since the Obama administration, it’s time,” she says in a video uploaded to TikTok in May.
“As a relationship therapist, I’ve literally spent my career studying the art of attraction and human psychology, so I know these things work,” Kimberly Moffit, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, said in a 2022 TikTok video. Maybe your crush is shy and you want to know if he’s “micro-flirting” with you? A telltale sign: dirty jokes. “An aggressive guy will just hit on you,” she said. said“but a shy guy will really test the waters first.”
If you don’t know, it’s a boom time for influencer dating. According to a new investigation According to a study conducted by the Flirtini app among single adults aged 18 to 62, one in four people rely on TikTok as their primary source of relationship information, and nearly 50% of respondents turn to social media for dating advice.
This phenomenon has created an ecosystem of thoughtful, overzealous, trend-seeking influencers who think they know what’s best for you. The market is now flooded with gurus offering romantic tips and how-tos to anyone who will listen. Everyone from credentialed therapists and life coaches to that annoying friend who just discovered bell hooks. All about love and wants to share everything they’ve learned, now presents themselves as a dating influencer. The effect has been seismic. On TikTok, the hashtags #datingadvice and #relationshipadvice have more than 16 billion views.
And it’s not just bad advice per se. Kai’s advice about self-gaslighting is actually pretty smart. (Kai and the other influencers mentioned in this article did not respond to messages seeking comment.) There’s just one problem: Misinformation about relationships spreads quickly.
A growing number of young adults now get their news from TikTok, according to 2023 study Pew Research Center study“So it makes sense that they’re also turning to the app for relationship advice,” says Liesel Sharabi, a professor at Arizona State University who specializes in the effects of technology on relationships. The increased reliance on the platform as a go-to source for romantic advice has led many users to form parasocial relationships with advice influencers. Unlike face-to-face IRL relationships, these tend to be one-sided. But emotionally, they feel real.
“Someone may feel like they’re getting dating advice from a trusted friend because they’ve developed a very strong sense of familiarity and connection with that person,” says Sharabi. “The problem is that when it comes to dating, many people call themselves experts on TikTok without any training or qualifications, which can make it difficult to separate fact from opinion.”
Not all advice is equal. As dating influencers gain popularity on social media, the proliferation of false relationship information becomes harder to contain. According to Sharabi, this is “false or misleading information about relationships that cannot be evaluated using scientific data and may perpetuate harmful stereotypes.”
